| |
Abstract |
Nature is regarded as one of the main tourism attractions in Finland as well as in many other destinations. This makes tourism especially important for rural areas, such as Lapland. Rural communities in sparsely populated areas have to deal with environmental changes caused by the increase in the use of natural resources and also by global issues, e.g. climate change. Anticipation and adaptation are important for the strategic tourism planning. Strategic development work is part of the planning system at many geographical levels. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how recent national and regional tourism strategy documents take into account issues related to those natural surroundings where tourism takes place in Finland. What is the role of national parks and other protected areas in tourism planning, which natural features are emphasised, and how such environmental issues as climate change are anticipated? The results of the textual analysis of three tourism strategy documents show that tourism development is often discussed only in economic and marketing terms and not much from the point of view of environmental or socio-cultural issues. For example, strategy documents refer to climate change in a very cursory way. National parks and other protected areas are noticed as attractions but their role has not been developed further. Forests are seldom mentioned which is especially interesting in the case of Finland where the use of forests has caused conflicts between tourism and forestry in Northern Finland. The concept of wilderness, which was present in the earlier tourism strategy of Lapland, has almost disappeared from the latest strategy document. |
|
