Review of Tourism and change in polar regions: climate, environment and experience and Cruise tourism in polar regions: promoting environmental and social sustainability?

Abstract

These two edited volumes, which cover much of the same ground, both begin from a common premise: polar tourism, as its been experienced by wealthy travellers for over a century, has a very definite shelf life. With the acceleration of global climate change, the Arctic and Antarctic are being changed, changed rapidly, perhaps permanently and, if one pays attention to the news, seemingly by the day. When combined with popular documentaries and feature films like An inconvenient truth, March of the penguins and Happy feet potential polar tourists have been sensitized to see the polar regions not as implacably hostile wastes once challenged only by the likes of Nansen, Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton but as irreplaceably fragile zones that, once lost, will take some essential part of the planet with them.

(Published: 21 April 2011)

Citation: Polar Research 2011, 30, 7152, DOI: 10.3402/polar.v30i0.7152