Moving wilderness back to the stage: Increasing tourism and non-governmental activities in Antarctica

Wilderness protection in Antarctica is already a policy target emphasized in the Netherlands policy framework for the Polar Regions, and it will be even more concretized in the new policy setting. Against this background, a PhD-project on the relevance of wilderness concept for managing tourist and other non-governmental activities in Antarctica will be presented. The project is funded by NWO and had been launched in the beginning of 2014. It investigates the central research question: “To what extent can the concept of protecting Antarctic wilderness values constitute a basis for regulating tourism and other non-governmental activities in Antarctica, taking particular notice of experiences and ‘lessons learnt’ in other wilderness areas in the world?” In doings so, first results will be introduced, comprising, among other, a preliminary working approach that has been developed to investigate the subjects of research and an outline of the main motivations for protecting Antarctica’s wilderness from a legal point of view. Moreover, some details of two of the case studies will be provided, displaying wilderness areas in the Arctic, meeting comparable wilderness characteristics as the Antarctic, and representing as well popular tourist destinations. One of the case studies is Spitsbergen where the PhD-researcher has had the opportunity to conduct relevant on-site research as being a participant of the recent SEES expedition to the archipelago in August this year