Governing unruly tourism growth in Svalbard

Svalbard is experiencing rapid climate and environmental change, putting the socioenvironmental system under stress. At the same time, maritime tourism has, with a brief hiatus during the pandemic, seen almost an exponential growth, challenging the current management regime. Historically, coal mining has provided the basis for human settlements of Svalbard, but in 2018 the Norwegian government closed the major mine and declared that tourism should be one of the pillars for the main human settlement in Svalbard, Longyearbyen. However, the unrulines of rapid tourism growth, partly enabled by the shrinking polar sea ice,  have seen the Norwegian government scrambling to find governance responses to the development, with proposed solutions prompting protests and outrage in Longyearbyen. The proposed legislative changes have no precedent elsewhere in Norway, and the implications for nature conservation management are potentially profound, reshaping the boundaries of Norwegian natural resource management. The knowledge basis for sustainable governance of tourism and other human activities is lacking, paving the way for the precautionary principle. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, we find conflicting narratives of what Svalbard ought to be. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, we find conflicting narratives of what Svalbard ought to be; whether the ‘best managed wilderness in the world’ with a limited number of tourists in selected places, or a place where tourism is a source of sustainable livelihoods that, when managed well, will have negligible local impacts on the environment. These different ideas of what Svalbard’s future should be call for increased attention to the unruliness of both the social and environmental aspects of nature and tourism governance.