The two partners received 80,000 Danish kroner ($14,700) from the Nordic Council of Ministers Arctic Cooperation Program to carry out the study.
Site guidelines are a tool to manage environmentally friendly, safe and culturally considerate tourism at a specific site. Before issuing guidelines, an on-site vulnerability assessment is carried out to decide which advice could be given to visitors.
When AECO issues guidelines, all AECO members—more than 20 operators fielding approximately 25 vessels all over the Arctic—will be required to adhere to the guidelines.
AECO has already developed 20 site-specific guidelines for Svalbard and is working with the Russian Arctic national park to develop guidelines for Franz Josef Land in Arctic Russia. In Arctic Canada, a larger national project in cooperation with AECO also aims to develop a number of site-specific guidelines.
The Greenland feasibility study will include considerations related to finances, partners, organization, logistics, geography and more. A number of stakeholders will be invited to participate in a workshop. If such a project is considered feasible, funding applications for a full-scale Greenland site-specific guidelines project could be under way by the end of this year, AECO said.
