Context-sensitive political ecology to consolidate local realities under global discourses: a view for tourism studies

• In this paper, we explore global change challenges based on experiences encountered during the EU Life+ VACCIA project (Vulnerability Assessment of ecosystem services for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation), which took place between 2009 and 2011 (Bergström, Mattsson, Niemelä, Vuorenmaa & Forsius, 2011; Forsius et al., 2013). This project aimed at developing adaptation measures based on the understanding of: 1) the likelihood of local change due to climate change, 2) the vulnerability of specific sectors to predicted climate change, and 3) knowledge production regarding local-scale possibilities for adaptation. VACCIA’s Action 12 on tourism arranged participatory workshops and interviews with local nature-based tourism stakeholders in the tourism destinations of the town of Kuusamo and the municipality of Sotkamo in Northern Finland (Lépy et al., 2014; see Figure 13.1). One of the main challenges was to transform the long temporal scope of climate change studies into locally meaningful weather events and to translate the concept of ecosystem services into understandable environmental benefits and changes for local tourism entrepreneurs. Another important challenge was related to the effect of global discourses that could easily have suppressed local concerns about the nearby mining development of Talvivaara by keeping a narrow focus on the predetermined global climate change research agenda. From the political ecology point of view, by limiting the discussion on the original agenda of climate change, the researchers would have been forced to take part in the local politics in an apolitical camouflage, which would have stifled people’s actual worries (Robbins, 2004). Such observations led us to acknowledge the need for context-sensitivity and bottom-up approaches in global change research agendas in tourism studies.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Etnologi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Ethnology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialantropologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Anthropology (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)