Gardermoen, June 5-6, 2024
Svalbard Site Use Workshop Summary
report
Why workshop?
Over the past few years, several new regulations related to tourism in Svalbard have been proposed and decided or are expected to be decided soon. In addition to major changes in environment and safety regulations, the Norwegian government has presented a new White paper for Svalbard with a series of proposals that will or may impact the expedition cruise industry.
To consider how the industry can best align to these new and stricter regulations, AECO convened a workshop for its members to discuss the proposed changes and to determine the optimal approach for its members to navigate these changes. The role and purpose of the two-day workshop was to provide advice regarding measures, tools and policies, for further administrative considerations and subsequent decisions on this year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM).
All members were invited to give their input to the agenda for the workshop.
25 participants from 19 of AECO’s operating members took part in the workshop. They included representatives from both larger and smaller operators, representing a cross section of competences in the organisations they represented.
Background
The new environmental regulations outline several key adjustments to how the cruise industry can operate in Svalbard. The purpose is largely to protect the environment and conserving an increasingly fragile wildlife against the backdrop of climate change and increasing traffic to Svalbard.
A variety of new regulations – including site and passenger restrictions in protected areas - will be enter into force January 1, 2025.
Most importantly:
There will be a limit of maximum 200 passenger onboard vessel in protected areas
Landing from cruise vessels in protected areas will be prohibited, except for:
o 43 designated areas
o Some areas between January 1 and May 25 on frozen and snowcovered ground
Of the 43 designated areas:
o 13 are restricted to 39 visitors at the same time
o 7 sites have fixed boundaries, the remaining 36 have no boundaries once landed
The regulatory notes include that "It will be up to the cruise industry itself to find a system for coordinating of landings and the utilisation of the various sites.” There is an authority in regulations to close sites if they are not managed in an appropriate manner or if the pressure on the natural environment and wildlife becomes excessive.
Landing sites outside of the protected areas is still allowed but the new regulations allow for closure of any site if pressure becomes too high.
Other new environmental regulations potentially affecting operations include:
Polar bear minimum distances
Walrus minimum distances
Prohibitions use of remotely controlled devices
In addition, the new Svalbard White Paper states that:
"The number of cruise passengers is on the rise, placing pressure on the environment, emergency preparedness, and infrastructure. It is, thus, necessary to assess the scope of this activity. The government will impose a cap on the number of people allowed on cruise ships in the territorial waters around Svalbard."
Issues and challenges
The new regulations reduce the number of landing sites in the restricted areas and, thus, the capacity for landing visitors on Svalbard. In addition, reduced capacity may lead to increased risk of conflict with non-member operators and local users, as well as increased activity – and therefore impact – on restricted sites. If so, this may trigger further restrictions.
This creates several issues and challenges that the workshop was asked to address:
1. How to voluntarily manage reduced visiting capacity to align to new regulations.
2. How to mitigate risks of conflict with other users and local communities, as well as possible adverse regulatory reactions.
3. What policies and mechanism are needed to ensure compliance.
Managing reduced visiting capacity
In principle, there are two ways in which capacity challenges can be addressed:
Increase capacity by splitting existing or finding new landing sites, and/or
Putting in place measures to better manage/utilise permitted landing sites within new restrictions.
Both approaches were discussed, and the workshop unanimously agreed on the following principles and measures:
Splitting existing sites
Already, 6 of the 43 restricted sites/areas are registered in the booking system with 2-3 landing sites. The participants were positive to identify opportunities for splitting more sites/areas into several landing sites, provided that relevant considerations are done, and appropriate protocols put in place - including considerations about safety, vessel capacity, visitor experience, total traffic on the site, as well as other relevant factors.
The workshop recommended that the new Field Operation Committee suggests and determines rules and guidelines for possible split and use of split sites.
Finding and registering new landing sites
Participants were positive to locating new sites for use. However, this should up to the respective operators.
If an operator identifies and uses a new site not currently in the cruise database, the knowledge of the site should be shared with other members and therefore reported to AECO for inclusion in the booking system. No set deadline should be applied for such reporting, but expectations are that this should happen in a timely manner.
Finding new sites should be upon the initiative of the operators. AECO should have no role in identifying new sites.
As other operators would need more information about the new sites than currently captured in the booking system, a template for reporting of new sites should be developed and used. This should include basic information about security, landing conditions and other relevant operational information. AECO should develop a template. If particular guidelines are needed for the site, this should be the responsibility of the Field Operations Committee.
To free-up capacity on restricted sites, operators should be encouraged to channel more visits to existing sites outside restricted areas.
Managing and utilizing reduced capacity (restricted sites)
Several possible measures to better manage the reduced capacity at the restricted sites were discussed, whereupon the workshop agreed on the following recommendations:
AECO should introduce stricter timeslots modelled on the IAATO timeslot system, splitting the day into five slots: Early AM, Prime AM, Prime PM, Late PM and Night.
Operators should only be allowed to book a maximum of two consecutive slots, of which only one should be “prime” (i.e. it should not be possible to book two consecutive prime slots).
Concurrent booking of multiple sites should not be allowed.
When designing the details of the new booking system, the criteria should be defined so that the same slot system can also be implemented in other areas than Svalbard if necessary.
Infeasible measures
Differentiating access to certain sites by vessel size or type
Restricting landing to maximum one per day
Reserving 39-visitor sites to certain vessel types
- were also discussed but unanimously rejected as infeasible or unnecessary solutions.
It was also clarified that the above recommendations can easily be facilitated by the new Cruise database, and that few – if any – options are technically infeasible in the new system.
Non-members
While AECO can implement measures to manage its own members’ use of landing sites, the organization has little impact on other users’ use of the sites. This inherently represents a risk of “double bookings” or conflicts at site.
One option to help other users to steer clear of booked or occupied sites (also discussed as a measure to avoid conflict) is to open up AECO’s booking system for other users to view to check the availability of registered sites.
While all participants agreed that increased transparency could be a helpful approach, they also acknowledged that such openness could also open up for abuse and that there are strong arguments against it. A complicating factor is also that the booking system is dynamic and “real time” – providing options for same-day bookings.
Several options for increased transparency were discussed – from granting nonmembers viewing access to the booking site to distributing weekly written updates –but largely with the same principal pros and cons.
Without further investigations into the feasibility, costs and administrative resources connected to the different options, the group concluded that this would be something for the administration to assess and rather come back to the members with a recommendation, if at all feasible.
Mitigating conflict risks and adverse reactions
The participants discussed strategies to handle conflicts and prevent negative reactions from the local community, scientists, guests, and members of the non-AECO group. It was commonly agreed that the risks of such conflicts are increasing, and that it is upon AECO and its’ members to take responsibility and self-regulate to minimise conflicts and avoid interventions from local or national authorities.
There was a discussion about what “self-regulation” would imply. Some argued that it would be infeasible to apply a “one size fits all” approach, and that any measure should be assessed in a greater context than just Svalbard – as many of the Svalbard issues also apply to other areas.
The participants then aligned behind a view that any measure to mitigate risks would need to be community-specific and that improved stakeholder interaction and dialogue would represent the optimal approach to identifying issues, risks and local community requirements. Therefore, stakeholder consultation should be at the heart of future strategies to mitigate risk of conflicts and to determine where and how to develop specific guidelines or measures.
Recommendations
Furthermore, the workshop agreed to:
Encourage members to
o Minimize traffic in identified areas of particular importance to local communities, such as Isfjorden
o Avoid landing close to local communities or areas with local inhabitant activities
o Reduce the number of concurrent vessels in port at Longyearbyen and other crowded ports
Develop community-specific guidelines (in addition to site-specific guidelines)
for more areas based on a community-by-community assessment and engagement process, where volume of visits, risk of conflicts, identified local requirements, environmental sensitivities, etc. should be important criteria for the assessment of needs.
Some participants suggested inviting AECO members to a Community Engagement workshop.
Develop and instigate a Code of Conduct for members. There was some discussion about the need for this, as some participants felt that it was already covered in the site-specific guidelines. However, when defined to being a “social code” for how members should behave in meetings with local communities and other user-groups, everyone agreed that such code should be developed and used a communications tool as well as a behavioural code for all members.
Other issues
Opening/resting hours
The workshop discussed the voluntary introduction of opening/resting hours as a proactive move to prevent environmental exhaustion of popular sites. The consensus view was that AECO should be open for such measures but that it was not something the group would recommend now.
Rather, the group concluded that AECO should use the next year and a half to gather data and use these to evaluate possible implications of the new restrictions as a basis for subsequent assessments of the need for rest periods.
If rest periods were to be introduced, the blocked slots should be integrated in the booking system.
AECO Forum
Furthermore, the workshop discussed to the need to better understand how the cruise industry can maximise value to local communities by, for example, accommodating guests to local amenities, such as cafes, hotels, and museums, within the limits of Longyearbyen's capacity.
Another issue that was discussed, is the limited capacity of regular flight seats to and from Svalbard and whether the cruise industry can offer available seats on chartered flights/better coordinate own use of regular flights. One suggestion was to create an AECO forum who could regularly facilitate meetings between the local community and
AECO members to discuss this and other relevant issues for local communities. (Secretariat comment: This is or can be covered by the existing Svalbard Cruise Forum).
Environmental Stewardship
A possible introduction of environmental stewardship guidelines was brought up but never concluded, partly due to lack of time but largely because few understood what this is and how it is different from a more general Code of Conduct. After a round of clarification, many expressed endorsements, but no recommendations were made.
Policies and mechanisms
Under this discussion the group agreed that most necessary policies and mechanisms to ensure alignment with the new regulations and their intentions were already discussed and the conclusions were exhaustive.
One additional point was discussed – the need to update marketing guidelines and encourage greater compliance – particularly when it comes to the use of photos and imageries (i.e. to avoid creating impressions that visitors can come close to polar bears and other wildlife species).
Some concrete suggestions came up:
To inform agents about the new rules and insist that they comply with AECO’s marketing guidelines for all marketing.
Clearly mark photos with lens-type and distance, to clearly show that possible animal pictures are not taken close-up.
Educate guides and own staff about the appropriateness of different images on social media.
Last, several participants underscored the importance of alignment to and compliance with the new regulations, reminding the group that the optics of how the industry is behaving is almost as important as what it actually does – emphasising the need to pay particular attention to its activities close to local communities in general and Isfjorden in particular.
Way forward
The workshop has developed specific recommendations that will be presented for AECO's Annual General Meeting (AGM) for decision making.
Some issues may be subject to further considerations and discussions.
