Currents Summer 2024 (1) - Flipbook - Page 16
Even as tourists claim their reasons for visiting Antarctica have to do with nature, it is the
people themselves who take center stage. Humans become the focal point. Nature is
observed within their frame of reference, which ultimately relates back to a first-person
narrative. Over a third of the tourists from Vereda9s study said that arriving at their seventh
continent was a principal factor in the decision to book their trip.
True to their brochures, cruises teach passengers about the different penguin species found
on the Antarctic Peninsula and the early explorers who met their unfortunate ends near its
shores. Here, the transaction continues. Travelers are encouraged to collect photographs
and tally their new experiences, all while tour operators deftly affirm their customers9
expectations with informative sessions cleansed of anything deemed too controversial.
The phenomenon at play here is one of selective extractivism. Contextualized by the fact that
the tourists who do the extracting – of the nature they want to see and narratives they want
to hear – are predominantly those with greater socio-economic capabilities, the Antarctic
tourism industry becomes one of exclusivity and perpetuation of privilege. Those who can
afford to visit Antarctica at their leisure are often members of the same groups who benefit
from extraction of natural resources at the consequences to others9 livelihoods. It is nothing
less than ironic that it is precisely these groups hailing from wealthy, industrialized societies
who often turn around to tell those at the fringes of economic possibility not to burn wood or
to switch their lights off when not in use.
This irony is mostly lost on the likes of Antarctic cruise passengers, who are told by their tour
company hosts that, by traveling to the region, they have been anointed Antarctic
Ambassadors by the IAATO. They are encouraged to spread the word about conservation in
Antarctica to their communities once they return home.
The reality, though, is that the very act of being a tourist in Antarctica is incompatible with the
goals of conservation. At its core, the Antarctic tourism industry is a thinly-veiled, exclusively
commercial venture which necessarily exacerbates and accelerates the devastation of the
continent it purports to protect.
Visitors are drawn to the continent by the idea that it is one of the last pristine places on the
planet, untouched by exploitative human activity. Yet as their boots touch the snow and their
ship9s waste churns into cold ocean waters, they do not even realize how they have violated
their own expectations.
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