Linking Culture and the Environment

106 WWF Arctic Tourism Guidelines Initiative
Principles into practice: implementation and establishment
The implementation stage involves constructing the mechanisms and tools
that will enable the sustainable tourism project to be put into operation.
Establishment refers to the acceptance of the mechanisms and tools in the
target user groups. This moves the effort from the concept, here identified in
the principles and codes, into the realm of practice.
With a strong degree of commitment among participants to the principles
and codes as developed through these consultations, WWF began to organize
the implementation stage of the process. A workshop in Longyearbyen,
Svalbard, in March 1997 examined questions of how best to implement the
programme. Broad participation was achieved and included individuals from
conservation interests, the research sector, the tourism industry, Arctic communities
and governments. These participants came from Canada, Denmark,
Finland, Germany, Iceland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia,
Sweden, the UK, and the USA.
Implementation was to include a series of pilot projects to evaluate components
of the project and an interim steering committee to oversee the development
of the programme over a 12-month period. This committee, reflecting
the constituents of the Arctic, comprised representatives of indigenous and
other Arctic people; local tourism NGOs; destination tour operators; international
operators; conservation NGOs; and, the research community.
A variety of tasks were identified for the interim committee to undertake
in the next 12 months. The committee was to:
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support responsible tourism and promote the goals of the initiative;
develop a consultation process for the involvement of communities and
local people in the project;
establish a membership organization with several categories of
membership;
establish criteria for membership in the organization;
promote wide dissemination of the guidelines;
maintain a web site/home page on the World Wide Web;
coordinate the translation of the guidelines into appropriate languages;
develop a name for the programme, a logo and a labelling system;
promote communication among all parties concerned;
provide information to communities, tour operators and tourists regarding
the Arctic tourism guidelines;
address and organize monitoring of the programme;
establish an Arctic tourism database;
promote national initiatives to implement the programme;
undertake fund-raising on behalf of the organization (authors’ notes).
In order to assist the interim committee achieve its objectives, staff resources
were provided by the WWF Arctic Programme for an interim secretariat. It
was intended that the permanent office of the secretariat would be located in
the Arctic, but initially this function was housed in the Oslo office. These
steps can be seen as an attempt by WWF to distance itself from the organizing
function of the Arctic tourism project. An interim steering committee and