SUPER project presented on the sustainable nature tourism in the Barents Region webinar

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SUPER project presented at the webinar on sustainable nature tourism in the Barents Region organized by the Working Group on Environment (WGE) of Barents Euro-Arctic cooperation (BEAC)

Project partners CEDTENK, North-Centre and Karelian Research Centre of RAS took part in the webinar and North-Centre presented the SUPER project. The webinar had more than 40 participants from four countries, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia and from at least 29 different organisations. The participants were members of the BEAC, its cooperators or stakeholders. The webinar was an opportunity to disseminate the results of projects and interact with other similar projects in the Barents region. Other projects that were presented included KA5041 NatureBeST, PAN - Phenomena of Arctic Nature (KO2093), Developing Low Carbon and Economically Sustainable Tourism in Lapland and presentation on Vindelälven-Juhttátahkka Biosphere Reserve and its potential of nature tourism.

Projects presented shared views on e.g. how to improve the resilience of areas to the high tourist pressure, on the ethical guidelines for Sami tourism and on the proximity of tourism.

                                                  
                                      Challenges of Sámi tourism and "The Future we want" from the Ethical guidebook on the Sámi tourism

The topics for discussion after all the presentations focused on how nature tourism sector could strengthen the responsible tourism approaches, especially taking into account the responses to the post-covid recovery, what kind of needs there are for cross-border cooperation and could Barents cooperation actors give support in this effort and on how to enhance possibilities, ways and means to implement and disseminate the results of the projects.
The improvements on the infrastructure on the Russian side were considered important by the Russian participants and the point of not focusing on mass tourism and rather on the quality of the visits - the length of the visit and use of local services was raised on the Finnish side.

The webinar was the first one in the series of webinars organized by the BEAC WGE. The next webinar organized at the beginning of next year will focus on the circular economy.