Sustainable Tourism and Global Climate Change in Polar Regions: Women’s Voices and Agency

Abstract:

            Tourism plays an increasingly important role in Arctic communities around the world but the impacts of global climate change on Arctic tourism remains an understudied area. This research seeks an understanding of how residents of Arctic towns perceive the role of global climate change in shaping tourism in their communities and how tourists visiting these locations perceive global climate change impacts on the region. Women’s perceptions, particularly how indigenous women’s perceptions are situated on an axis of difference with women of other ancestries, are largely absent from existing scholarship and this research directly addresses this gap.

            Results from unstructured interviews with residents of Utqiaġvik, Alaska reveal perceptions regarding the influence of global climate change on the region, how it is shaping daily life, and whether it is impacting local tourism. The role of tourism in Utqiaġvik was also explored to reveal its impacts on local women and their sense of safety/privacy related to the tourism sector. Results from unstructured interviews with tourists in Utqiaġvik, Alaska reveal perceptions regarding what, if any, role global climate change played in their visit to the Arctic and other motivating factors. This research addresses questions from the literature around the growth of “last-chance tourism” in the Arctic and whether it is a motivating factor throughout the region. Research gaps on women’s perceptions of the role of global climate change in Arctic tourism and a lack of data on women’s views of safety/privacy related to tourism are also addressed.

Keywords: Global Climate Change, Tourism, Sustainability, Arctic, Feminist Theory

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