NS34 Session 1

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Title: Resilience for whom? Tourism, vulnerability, and adaptation in Nordic and global settings

Organisers: Siamak Seyfi and Jarkko Saarinen

Affiliation: University of Oulu

Description

Contemporary human–environment systems across both the Nordic region and the wider world face accelerating and unequal pressures. The Anthropocene, understood as a phase in which human actions have planetary consequences, shapes environments and societies in ways that remain difficult to predict with confidence. These pressures are clearly visible in Nordic settings where Arctic warming transforms ecosystems, mobility patterns, and long-standing livelihood practices. Similar processes are evident in regions affected by extended fire seasons, prolonged drought, rising seas, and political instability. Tourism operates within these global and Nordic changes and moves through circuits of extraction, mobility, and disturbance that define this period. As visitor flows extend into fragile Nordic landscapes and crisis-prone regions worldwide, questions arise about how communities respond and whose resilience is emphasized in policy narratives. This situation has encouraged growing reliance on resilience thinking in tourism research, planning, and governance. Resilience is often associated with the ability of individuals and communities to absorb shocks, reorganize, and continue functioning. Yet this framing raises important questions. What kinds of disruption are communities expected to accept? Who defines resilience and for what purposes? How are responsibility and risk allocated across institutions, tourism industries, and local residents? Which political and economic decisions shape exposure and protection?

Against this background, this session examines how tourism and community resilience are shaped and questioned across Nordic and global settings under Anthropocene conditions. The aim is to challenge assumptions that present tourism as an automatic route to recovery and to examine cases where resilience is framed as a community obligation rather than a shared institutional responsibility. Contributions may ask whose futures are prioritized in tourism development, which groups are expected to adjust to ongoing pressure, and what forms of social and ecological care are possible when tourism growth takes place alongside climate stress, political instability, and economic uncertainty.

This session welcomes both conceptual and empirical contributions. Studies using qualitative, participatory, or collaborative methods are particularly encouraged. The goal is to support grounded discussion on whether current tourism pathways contribute to fair and ecologically viable futures, or whether they reinforce existing social and environmental strain.