Tourism in the Arctic and Antarctic regions is growing rapidly. Tourism operations in the polar-regions capitalize on the regions' natural assets, including their landscapes, wildlife and remoteness. Tourists from across the world are attracted by the pristine character, the sparsely or non-populated wilderness areas and the unique historical and cultural assets. However, the Arctic and the Antarctic are among the regions in the world where climatic changes are most rapid and profound, turning them into a focal point of economic and geopolitical development. Tourism development can be both seen as a contributor and a victim of these developments, with potential implications for natural resource use and peripheral communities.

This Special Issue "Sustainable Tourism and Natural Resource Conservation in the Polar Regions" explores how expectations towards tourism development in the polar regions can be managed to enhance the conservation of natural resources, the protection of the environment, and the wellbeing of peripheral communities. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Impacts of tourism on polar wilderness area

  • Human-wilderness/wildlife interactions in the polar regions

  • Regulation and management of polar tourism and wilderness protection

  • Tourist motivations for visiting the polar regions

  • Community interactions with tourism enterprises and polar tourists

  • Tourism and land use competition

  • Economic geographies of polar tourism

  • Accessibility and transportation in polar areas

  • The social construction/performance of touristic polar wilderness

  • Global change and the polar regions

  • Parks and protected areas (including marine) in the polar regions

This Special Issue is targeted at the papers presented at the International Polar Tourism Research Network (IPTRN) conference held in Iceland in August 2016, but the call is also open to others. We would like to invite a feature contribution from you (i.e., either a long review or research paper). Papers will be published *free of charge* in this Special Issue (contrary to normal papers published in this open access journal).

We encourage you to check out the Special Issue website at: 

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/resources/special_issues/polar_tourism

The official deadline for submission is 30 April 2017. 

Resources (ISSN 2079-9276) is an Open Access journal of natural resources. The journal is indexed by ESCI (Web of Science), Scopus, and gets high visibility.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/resources

Dr. Machiel Lamers, Wageningen University, the Netherlands (machiel.lamers@wur.nl)

Dr. Edward Huijbens, University of Akureyri, Iceland