You may be forgiven for raising eyebrows at any attempt to draw parallels between the Maltese archipelago and Iceland. After all, despite joining us every two years within the Games of the Small States of Europe (GSSE), mainly by virtue of its small population (circa 330,000) rather than its dimensions (roughly 103,000km2, or 300 times the extent of the Maltese archipelago), Iceland is considered to be poles apart from our own context.
And the perplexity is perfectly understandable, given the 4,000km which separate the two island nations, with Iceland lying just shy of the Arctic Circle while Malta is entrenched in the heart of the Mediterranean, adorning the two islands with diametrically-opposed climates. But despite these obvious peculiarities and Iceland’s pronounced volcanism and all the baggage this brings along (like geysers), there is a greater degree of juxtaposition between the planning policies of the two island nations than meet the eye a prima facie.
The COVID-19 pandemic and Iceland’s relative isolation and the effective handling of the same pandemic by its health authorities have conjured to make Iceland a mouth-watering destination for tourists. So much so that, in the heyday of tourist arrivals (2017), a 25 per cent spike in annual tourist arrivals over the 2016 numbers was registered, for a total of 2.3 million tourists, to which another half a million cruise tourists must be added.
The numbers uncannily stack up very similarly to the pre-COVID annual tourist volumes we experienced here in Malta. Acclaimed Icelandic author Alda Sigmundsdottir recounts, within her latest production titled The Little Book of Tourists in Iceland, how this surge in tourism arrivals is taking its toll on the evocative Icelandic landscape and, more ominously, on the Icelandic planning and environmental conservation modus operandi.
The relative lack of infrastructure to house and to transport the burgeoning number of tourists as a result of the recent nature of such a phenomenon is probably the most challenging caveat. Putting it crudely, accommodation facilities are simply insufficient in Iceland and the existing roads, many of which are still in single-land mode once you emerge from the Reykjavik urban fabric, are inadequate to handle the ever-spiralling traffic composed of rented cars.
Consequently, tourism is no longer perceived as a green industry by environmentalists in Iceland and is increasingly under the spotlight as conflicts over land usage become ever more internecine.
Alda classifies the collective environmental impacts of tourism in Iceland within three different tiers: depletion of natural resources, pollution and physical impact. In 2017, plans for the development of a 342-bed hotel along the margins of the Kerlingjafoll mountain in the central highlands region were unveiled.
The Icelandic central highlands are considered as one of Europe’s largest unspoilt natural areas, being embellished with a stunning interplay of colours, courtesy of the mineral-studded rocks and soils, and with a frenzy of hot springs and bubbling fumaroles.
Human greed and the urge to make a fast buck is a powerful incentive to exploit the natural environment for personal gain- Alan Deidun
The building of the hotel raised many red flags in Iceland, mainly due to the provision of electrical supply to the same hotel (which entailed the sacrilege of entrenching electricity pylons or of ploughing up trenches in an otherwise pristine landscape) as well as due to the inevitable issues of sewage and thrash disposal, of light pollution generation and of freshwater provision. An additional aspect not to be overlooked was the enhancement of the road network servicing the highlands area in question, given that the Kjolur access road was largely inadequate to cope with the more copious traffic.
In an uncanny parallel with the Maltese context, the Icelandic Roads Authority, over the course of 20 years, steadily intervened on the same road in a piecemeal fashion, thus resorting to the familiar ‘salami-slicing’ strategy through which a fully-fledged EIA (environment impact assessment) study is averted.
Alda’s book uses Lake Myvatn, in the north-east of Iceland and already enjoying World Heritage Site status, as a poster child for increasing pollution from tourism, mainly from discharges from cruise ships as well as from the snowballing numbers of tourists staying at hotels along the lake’s shores, given that the area lacks a proper sewage treatment plant.
In terms of the physical impacts of tourism in Iceland, these range from the smattering of toilet paper increasingly adorning the margins of car parks and walking trails as a result of tourists heeding the call (once again, this sounds uncannily familiar to Malta – a visit to the sand dune remnants at Golden Bay will enlighten) to tourists actually ripping off the natural vegetation lining highways through off-roading (here in Malta, we are definitely not alien to such an infringement) or through collection of natural assets (anything from pebbles, swathes of moss to insulate their tents, etc.).
Perhaps the most ominous aspect of the Icelandic tourism watershed (and, to a certain extent, this is once again reminiscent of the Maltese context) is the scramble to scoop up the island’s most iconic site in a rat race to rake in the profits which can invariably be made off such sites. The glacier lagoon at Jokulsarlon, in the south-east of the country, probably one of the most iconic sites in Iceland, is a case in point.
Unbelievably, this natural wonder was a whisker away in November 2016 from being snapped up by a private investment fund before the government was nudged into action by environmental advocates in the nick of time to bring it back into the public domain.
The Italians have an eloquent saying which lays bare the universality of the shortcomings and failures of human nature which transcend political borders or races and ethnic groups: ‘Tutto il mondo è paese’. In this case, human greed and the urge to make a fast buck is indeed a powerful incentive to exploit the natural environment for personal gain, whatever the latitude or longitude you are based at.
The powers that be in Iceland should take stock of the past mistakes conducted in paragons of unsustainability like Malta so as to avoid committing the same faux pas and, thus, preserve its timeless scenery for posterity.