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.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS