ABSTRACT
One of the few silver linings in the COVID pandemic has been a new appreciation for, interest in, and engagement with nature. As countries open, and travel becomes accessible again, there is an opportunity to reimagine sustainable nature-based tourism from a therapeutic landscape lens. Framed within the therapeutic landscape concept, this paper provides an autoethnographic account of a visitor's experience of three different natural landscapes in Iceland shortly after the country's fourth wave of the pandemic. It adds to the understanding of the healing effects of the multi-colored natural landscapes of Iceland. The natural landscapes of interest herein include: the southern part of the Westfjörd peninsula, Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon, and the Central Highlands. In totality, the natural, built and symbolic environments worked in synchronicity to produce three thematic results: restoration, awe and concern, all which provided reduced stress, renewed attention, as well as enhanced physical and psycho-social benefits for the autoethnographic visiting researcher. Implications of these restorative outcomes for sustainable nature-based tourism in a post-COVID era are discussed. This paper highlights how health and tourism geographers can work collaboratively to recognize, protect, and sustain the therapeutic elements of natural landscapes, recognized as a cultural ecosystem service. In so doing, such collaborations can positively influence sustainable nature-based tourism development and consumption through proper and appropriate planning and development of such tourism destinations.
ABSTRACT
The new paradigm of sustainable development highlights the importance of enforcing defined boundaries between economies, societies, and the environment within a system. Sustainability indicators are tools that have proven to be a successful aid in defining and creating system boundaries. This paper focuses on the development of sustainability indicators for Arctic tourism, with a special emphasis on the role of public participation in their determination. It presents a stakeholder-centric approach to indicator selection by developing a framework that effectively integrates public participation in the processes of indicators’ selection and designation, and highlights the importance of combining local and expert knowledge in these processes. The results reveal that the making of sustainability indicators is an ideal platform for local voices to be heard, and thus to have a significant stake in the overall process of tourism development. The most effective way to make their voices heard in the final decision-making process is via their evaluation of the adaptability and prioritization of these indicators. The results, furthermore, stress that sustainability indicators need to be constantly re-evaluated and updated, as tourism is part of a complex and dynamic system that is constantly changing. To provide a holistic vision of the impact of economic, environmental, and social factors, as well as the causality between them in the system, sustainability indicators must be integrated from many indicators. Since the monitoring of conventional indicators is often less complicated and more cost-effective than the monitoring of integrated indicators, a better result can however be reached by combining conventional indicators with sustainability indicators.