Abstracts for Session 30

Staying with the trouble of cruise communities in a post-covid world

Title: Resilience to cruise tourism: insights from Northern Norway and Svalbard

Authors: Karina Eline Knutzen, Hin Hoarau Heemstra, and Karin Andrea Wigger

Affiliation: Nord University

Given rapid economic, environmental, and social changes in the Arctic, resilience is regarded as a key aspect for the long-term viability of communities. Resilience is understood as the capacity to absorb disturbance and re-organize while undergoing change (Walkeret al.,2004). We  focus  on cruise tourism as driver of change, which has the capacity to influence resilience of Arctic cruise communities. For example, cruise tourism can provide opportunities for novel income sources and infrastructure development    building    resilience    of    Arctic    cruise    communities (Lassere   and TÊtu,  2015). Crowding and environmental degradation may challenge the resilience of these communities (James et al., 2020).To  get  a  more  nuanced  understanding  of  how  cruise  tourism  influences  resilience  of  Arctic  coastal communities, we are currently reviewing 106 newspaper articles on cruise tourism in Northern Norway and Svalbard. We apply a stepwise coding approach to systematically analyze the newspaper articles. In the first step, we identify cruise practices discussed in the newspapers and the impact these practices have on the cruise communities. In the second step, we discuss inspired by the literature on resilience and tourism practices, themes related to cruise practices and the influence on resilience. Our   tentative   analysis   suggests   that   cruise   tourism   practices, such   as   mass   excursionist visits and offerings from the tour operators lead to changes at the micro level (e.g., local businesses and residents), meso level (e.g., local tourism network and industry collaboration), and macro level (e.g., governance of common goods and tourism taxes), which in turn influence the resilience of Arctic cruise communities.

Keywords: Cruise tourism, Resilience, Tourism practices, Arctic communities

Title: Community perceptions of biocultural changes during the COVID disruption in Ketchikan, Alaska

Authors: Christina T. Cavaliere, Julia R. Branstrator, and Rebecca (Becky) Niemiec

Affiliation: Colorado State University

The authors have designed and conducted an empirical study focused upon perceptions of residents of Ketchikan, Alaska, regarding perceived changes in biocultural diversity since the reprieve from business-as-usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors present early findings from this qualitative study conducted in the southeastern fjords of this Alaskan coastal community. Ketchikan is a unique location shaped through industrial epochs requiring adaptations to complex detrimental impacts such as from the cruise industry and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Ketchikan is a part of the Revilla Island/Cleveland Peninsula bioregion (RICP) with one of the highest levels of biodiversity and five of the most productive watersheds (The Nature Conservancy, 2018) in Alaska.

The stoppage of human mobility has urged examination of the critical vulnerabilities of fishing and tourism dependent livelihoods of Southeast Alaskan residents. These communities have also experienced various environmental, economic, climate change and sociocultural impacts from the rapid growth of the cruise tourism sector prior to the global pandemic. Travel limitations within transnational waters have spurred Southeast Alaskan port towns to seek economic recovery and resilient redevelopment strategies. These inextricable relationships create complex impacts within a social-ecological system.

This study implemented a milieu of social-ecological systems (SES) theory that framed the interview schedule, eliciting participant experiences regarding changes to biocultural interrelationships during the pandemic. Thus, SES and sense of place methods guided the research exploration of the complex and interconnected relationships within biocultural diversity impacted by cruise tourism and now the global pandemic.