Linking Culture and the Environment

114 WWF Arctic Tourism Guidelines Initiative
as goals, which could be supported by best practice. An examination of existing
nature-based principles, best business practice, interviews of tourism experts
and operators resulted in the development of six principles of sustainable tourism.
These principles were agreed to by the project partners. The six principles
of sustainable Arctic tourism are that it: (i) supports the local economy;
(ii) operates in an environmentally friendly manner; (iii) supports the conservation
of local nature; (iv) respects and involves the local community; (v) ensures
quality and safety in all business operations and (vi) educates visitors about
local nature and culture (SMART, 2006). Guidelines were then created based on
the six principles to act as a framework for sustainable Arctic tourism.
The remaining outcomes of the SMART initiative were to raise awareness
of sustainable Arctic tourism, to develop training modules for operators
based on the six principles for sustainable Arctic tourism, to highlight ‘good
practice’ in the SMART workshops, the development or adoption of a sustainable
Arctic tourism label and the founding of the Sustainable Arctic
Tourism Association in October 2005 (SATA). Training modules are available
to interested operators at a web site (SMART, n.d). It is not clear how wide
the adoption of the SMART programme is, though clearly it represents a
comprehensive approach to helping operators understand and move towards
more sustainable tourism through its programmes.
Another recent initiative involves the creation of guidelines for members
of the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Ship Operators, a Europeanbased
member organization. Given the level of interest in an Arctic-wide
association similar to the International Association of Antarctica Tour
Operators, it has been suggested that this organization has much to offer
other parts of the Arctic, particularly the Canadian Arctic if existing government
regulations were included in guidelines (Marquez and Eagles, 2007).
Conclusions
Sustainable tourism initiatives have taken a variety of forms in numerous
settings. This chapter has focused primarily on a project to develop and
implement tourism guidelines and codes for the Arctic region. While the
details of the codes and of the implementation reflect very clearly the particular
requirements of the Arctic, the general themes and issues point to the
connections between this project and other sustainable tourism efforts.
This project provides a good example of the challenges involved in
attempting to implement a comprehensive principle-based programme.
Several key points can be identified through this review of the initiation,
development, implementation, establishment and monitoring. One is that
initiation and development of principles and codes must take place within a
wide community of interested parties. Input from communities, operators,
researchers and others is needed to ensure not only that the sustainable tourism
initiative makes sense for the intended region of use, but also that there
is real ownership from these groups in the final product. The success of
implementation may well depend on a high level of ownership.