Ecotourism and rewilding: the case of Swedish Lapland

ABSTRACT

This paper critically engages with the role of ecotourism in the emergent concept of rewilding, by examining the case of Rewilding Lapland, an initiative launched by the Rewilding Europe Foundation in 2015 (Rewilding Lapland was renamed Rewilding Sweden in early 2018). The paper investigates how ecotourism is discussed and approached in the Rewilding Lapland focal area, investigating the conflicts between local views and institutional approaches. There are tensions between local views and institutional approaches to ecotourism. The paper discusses these tensions in the context of the neoliberalisation of nature, and the friction between exclusive ecotourism and the Swedish Right of Public Access. The paper concludes that for respondents, the benefits of rewilding are influenced by the relationship fostered between themselves and the environment. For them, ecotourism offers a medium to engage with the environment, with the medium of engagement greatly affecting the relations that are fostered. The paper presents tensions as arising through the (deepening) neoliberalisation of nature the Rewilding Lapland ecotourism agenda pursues. To be successful, rewilding initiatives like Rewilding Lapland that promote ecotourism ventures must be aware of the types of human–nature relations these ventures foster, and how these may not always be valued by a local community.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumptive ecotourism
• nature-based tourism
• stakeholdersLapland
• rewilding
• wilderness

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Chris Sandbrook for encouraging me to pursue writing this paper, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and relevant comments on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Felix Koninx http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2001-9863

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Mary Euphrasia Mosely Fund, the David Richards Travel Scholarship, and St John’s College, Cambridge.