SUSTAINABLE ARCTIC CRUISE COMMUNITIES: FROM PRACTICE TO GOVERNANCE

For Arctic coastal communities, the arrival of cruise ships can offer economic opportunities, such as providing trips to local attractions and services for cruise ships. Nevertheless, the presence of cruise ships has been a subject of debate in the media and academia due to negative social and environmental consequences. The challenges faced by Arctic cruise communities are influenced by uncertainties and unpredictabilities related to climate, pandemics, geopolitical tensions, and changes. This project aims to generate insights into how local Arctic cruise communities adapt to the changes they are confronting, the evolution of cruise practices in a post-pandemic Arctic, and the role of sustainability in these transformations. We investigate how Arctic communities define and address challenges arising from cruise visits, or the absence thereof, and how being a cruise destination can connect them to ensure a sustainable future for cruise tourism across the European Arctic. We study five local cruise communities in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. Unfortunately, due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, we had to revise our initial plan and replace our Russian cases with an additional Norwegian case in March 2022. Our empirical data will be drawn from insights and knowledge shared by local cruise tourism stakeholders, including politicians, policymakers, ports, tourism providers, and tour operators, and will be exchanged among communities. Our initial focus was on developing a conceptual framework, which was published in 'Tourism Management Perspectives.' This framework serves as the theoretical foundation for creating interview guides and observation guides used during our fieldwork in 2021 and 2022. In 2023, our efforts are concentrated on data analysis, cross-case analysis, community reports, and outreach. We have also launched a project website in 2023, where interested stakeholders can access our publications and case findings: https://site.nord.no/sustainable-arctic-cruise-communities/. Furthermore, we organized community meetings in the fall of 2023, where stakeholders were invited to discuss our project's results. For these meetings, we developed a video and case posters available on our website and shared via social media. These community meetings were developed in collaboration with local stakeholders and tailored to their specific needs. For example, the meeting in Alta was scheduled during the partner meeting of the DMO to reach as many tourism stakeholders as possible. In Nuuk, our project hosted a workshop during the Greenland Science Week. All project partners contribute to these meetings by presenting their findings online or recording videos for presentation. We have also presented the case reports, cross-case findings, and facilitated discussions between researchers and participants. In Lofoten and Bodø, Norway, we presented and discussed our findings with local colleges (videregående skoler) that offer tourism education. We also contributed to local tourism discussions by publishing articles in local newspapers, such as Lofotposten and Avisa Nordland. To engage the tourism academic community, we are editing a special issue in The Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism in 2023/2024. This special issue will include research stemming from this project but is not limited to it. In 2023, we hosted tracks at two international conferences to raise awareness of sustainable tourism and community development in the Arctic. The data collected for this project forms the basis for collaborative scientific articles. For instance, Nord University, Nordland Research Institute, and Aalborg University published a literature review in 2023, and several empirical papers are in progress, some of which were presented at conferences in 2023 (f.e. at the Nordic Symposium for Tourism and Hospitality, Östersund 2023).

We propose to contribute to sustainable development of coastal communities in the Arctic through qualitative case studies of cruise tourism development in six cruise communities across the European Arctic. Because of climate change and an increased international interest to experience the nature and societies of the Arctic, cruise activities are increasing in the Arctic region and this calls for experience-sharing and cooperation in pursuit of best practices. Sustainable tourism development is necessary for the region to prevent negative impacts from a growing tourism industry and protect local natural, social and cultural resources. Cruise communities in Iceland, Greenland and Norway face similar challenges when it comes to safeguarding their natural environments and welfare of their societies. Cruise research in the Arctic is a field that is relatively under-researched and there is a need for understanding practices, management and governance of cruise activities. Our ambitions are to connect cruise communities in the European Arctic through our case studies and to provide them with ideas for sustainable development through an overview of research-based best practices. By identifying challenges, practices and governance for sustainability, we contribute to knowledge sharing and capacity building in the sense that communities can build upon experiences from others. There is novelty in a cross-Arctic comparative approach as the majority of Arctic cruise tourism research has been conducted as single case studies. To advance the knowledge of sustainable cruise development in the Arctic we take stance in the innovative research position of Haraway’s (2016) 'staying with the trouble'. This stance offers a valuable lesson on how we might engage with co-creating tourism knowledge. A practice-based approach further enables us to contribute to collective and sustainable governance of cruise tourism in the Arctic.