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Polar cruise boom harming the Arctic, explorer warns
Source: The Guardian
Polar cruise boom harming the Arctic, explorer warns
German adventurer Arved Fuchs says he has seen Inuit villages flooded with gawping tourists – ‘Party ships have no place here’
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Tue 13 Aug 2019 05.00 BST Last modified on Tue 13 Aug 2019 13.12 BST
One of the world’s leading polar explorers has warned against the explosive growth in cruise ship tourism in the Arctic, calling it damaging to both the local environment and its inhabitants.
Arved Fuchs, a German adventurer and the first person to reach both the north and south poles on foot in a year, said: “The number of cruise ships is rising, that’s the crux. And the bigger the ship, the more problematic this is. Party ships have no place in the Arctic,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung in an interview.
Fuchs, a celebrated environmentalist who runs an annual climate camp to teach European students about global warming, said he had witnessed small Inuit villages being inundated by day trippers spilling out of cruise ships.
“Some of the small Inuit villages are regularly flooded with cruise ship passengers,” he said. “They do nothing more than gawp and give little back to the people who live there. The visitors are the only ones to profit, not the residents.”
-snip-
German adventurer Arved Fuchs says he has seen Inuit villages flooded with gawping tourists – ‘Party ships have no place here’
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Tue 13 Aug 2019 05.00 BST Last modified on Tue 13 Aug 2019 13.12 BST
One of the world’s leading polar explorers has warned against the explosive growth in cruise ship tourism in the Arctic, calling it damaging to both the local environment and its inhabitants.
Arved Fuchs, a German adventurer and the first person to reach both the north and south poles on foot in a year, said: “The number of cruise ships is rising, that’s the crux. And the bigger the ship, the more problematic this is. Party ships have no place in the Arctic,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung in an interview.
Fuchs, a celebrated environmentalist who runs an annual climate camp to teach European students about global warming, said he had witnessed small Inuit villages being inundated by day trippers spilling out of cruise ships.
“Some of the small Inuit villages are regularly flooded with cruise ship passengers,” he said. “They do nothing more than gawp and give little back to the people who live there. The visitors are the only ones to profit, not the residents.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/polar-cruise-increase-harming-the-arctic-explorer-arved-fuchs-warns