A frozen landscape with breathtaking views, Greenland wants to attract more tourists, but its remote location and fragile environment — which make it a unique destination — also pose challenges.
“The effects of global heating are at their most pronounced in the Arctic,” said Michael Hall, a University of Canterbury professor and tourism expert.
Global warming is accelerating “the loss of Arctic sea ice in summer [as well as] the melting of permafrost, ice shelves and glaciers,” he said, referring to elements that contribute to the island’s uniqueness.
Photo: AFP
Across Greenland, locals are witnessing first-hand the effects of global warming.
On the southwestern coast, in Maniitsoq, the sea ice has not been solid enough to walk on since 2018. Residents have also seen it shrink from year to year, in addition to less abundant snowfalls.
Tourists are nonetheless awestruck by the vistas.
“It’s terra incognita,” said Amy Yankovic, a 55-year-old American tourist.
The Texan native traveled for almost 24 hours to get to Greenland, taking three connecting flights.
Tourism accounts for about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN, most of which is attributed to transportation.
There is “a kind of ‘last-chance tourism,’ where visiting these endangered sites is about wanting to see them before they disappear,” said Emmanuel Salim, a geography lecturer at the University of Toulouse in France.
He said similar destinations such as Churchill in Canada — known as the “polar bear capital of the world” — “have tried to position themselves as places for ‘learning’ about the environment.”
However, while such destinations can raise awareness about better environmental practices, their carbon footprints continue to rise, he said.
Developing tourism in a fragile environment is a tricky balancing act.
“Mitigation of the impacts of global heating on the Arctic is a global responsibility,” Hall said, adding that “current mitigation attempts are greatly inadequate.”
Greenlandic authorities insist they want a prudent development of the tourism sector to create jobs.
“In recent years we’ve seen that young people have started to become tour operators,” Maniitsoq mayor Gideon Lyberth said.
“We’re very, very happy, because young people have been leaving here for Nuuk, to live there, but now they’re coming back,” he said.
“Clearly such developments will usually be seen as a good idea, at least in the short term,” Hall said.
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
RSS