The hospitality industry is sometimes criticised for its negative contribution to the environment and sustainability. But the hospitality industry, when properly executed, has every opportunity to be a regenerative force for the place where it operates. In a number of articles, Swedish Lapland highlights some of the initiatives taken by the industry to pursue enhanced social, economic and environmental development. Because what would actually happen if Mother Earth were a member of the company board?
What would happen if we slowed down to address today’s polycrisis? Why is it that places inhabited by indigenous people and locally connected communities have a higher proportion of areas with outstanding ecological quality? What would it really be like if Mother Earth sat on the board of the large corporations that control the economy?
Winston Churchill’s quote: “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward” sometimes feels like a bygone era. But in a report from the World Economic Forum held in Davos in January 2023, Professor Deen Sanders states: “As a 100,000-year-old continuous culture, my people measure time and nature on a geological scale. My people have experience and story of four ice ages, each transforming entire landscapes and ecosystems.”
Researcher and palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday is also of the opinion that geological eras provide us with clues to guide decisions taken regarding today’s polycrisis. It certainly prompts reflection when Professor Sanders, who is Worimi, brings up that company boards should consider the indigenous peoples’ perspective in their decision-making equation. This would help them move away from the linear ‘quick profit’ mentality that drives the global economic engine – a throwaway culture that brings humanity to the brink of its destruction.
According to Sanders and other advocates of indigenous peoples’ knowledge, a cross-generational way of thinking – a will to slow down and follow nature’s own pace – would be preferable when tackling the challenges of the future, such as global climate impacts and loss of biological diversity. It is a perspective that should be considered when building societies.
– It was the elderly nomads, they told me that everything was changing, says Nils Torbjörn Nutti as we are having a chat in Jukkasjärvi, where his business, Nutti Sámi Siida, is located.
Nils Torbjörn Nutti, or ‘Nisse’ as he is known to his friends, celebrates more than 25 years as an entrepreneur in the hospitality industry. He was meant to be the one in the family to take over reindeer herding and learn from his elders. He says that back then, when the older generations spoke of change, they were not referring to the climate.
– No, to them it was the pace of things that had changed. It was the way society was built as a whole. They were used to the nomad pace: moving reindeer on foot, keeping the pace set by the landscape and the weather. All of a sudden, mobile phones, snow mobiles and lorries entered the reindeer herding industry. Those things were completely new to them. Everything happened so fast.
A third of the Earth’s surface is land where indigenous people and/or locally connected communities live. Interestingly, more than 80% of this area has good – or even outstanding – ecological quality. This says something about the value of local knowledge and traditions when it comes to preservation of biotopes. Today biological diversity is one of the most important questions, perhaps even the answer to the global challenges humanity is facing. However, indigenous people and local communities are rarely asked about the long-term viability of the solutions for the future. The idea of territorial intelligence is not considered. Nils Torbjörn continues:
– Yes, speaking of change we started feeding reindeer on a larger scale after Chernobyl. That was when modern society really made itself known in the middle of my reindeer herd. But in a way, it suited the societal pace afterwards. The nomadic life was difficult to control, and finances were stretched when reindeer meat became worth almost nothing.
– So, when Yngve Bergqvist at Icehotel asked if I could take some guests to my reindeer enclosure it was an additional leg to stand on.
Today Nils Torbjörn runs Márkanbáiki, a meeting place with a café, a museum and a reindeer enclosure that guests can enter and get close to the reindeer, in Jukkasjärvi.
– In so many ways, this is a softer form of activism, he says with a smile.
Nils Torbjörn Nutti is one of the Sami entrepreneurs who see their business as a way of teaching people about reindeer and the Sami culture, but also telling stories about how modern society has impacted reindeer, nature and reindeer herders. Lennart Pittja in Gällivare also belong to these Sami entrepreneurs.
– I chose early on to work with tourism to try to get my message across about the unique knowledge and near-nature lifestyle that indigenous people possess.
– My family, my father not the least, has fought and protested as long as anyone can remember. I thought that by choosing this road I would create a small resistance too, but I also wanted to contribute by teaching people about a life where nature means something.
The headline of this article is taken from Regenerate the Economic Machine, a report where Christopher Lyrhem, the SEB bank’s future and strategy analyst, among other things asks the following thought-provoking question: What would happen if Mother Earth were a board member? The report discusses whether it is possible to transition away from conventional linear economic thinking to circular thinking. At present, a mere 7% of the global economy is circular and the rest is extraction of resources. The question Lyrhem is asking is if we instead of counting economic value in units can shift to charging for the service that one unit gives. Currently, GDP does not take into account loss of biological diversity, how global warming is affected, if societies are thriving. GEP (Gross Ecological Product) would be a better measuring unit.
The hospitality industry has great potential to be the frontrunners of this regeneration of the economic machine. Experiences and service are a large part of the sales, but the industry often ends up using conventional ways of measuring.
– We have tried to demonstrate that we are a primary industry, and we have used a language that politicians and journalists understand, says Annika Fredriksson, CEO of Swedish Lapland Visitors Board.
– Instead of talking more about how the hospitality industry binds society together and instead of speaking of locally produced food as medicine, or that hospitality might be the key to world peace, we end up discussing how many employment opportunities are created, how many businesses are launched and the number of guest-nights at the destination.
– Even if I understand that we need to have ways of measuring things, it feels insufficient to become nothing but a number in the statistics. A society should be something more than just the turnover from an ore body that will actually run out one day.
When Hotell Kust was built in Piteå not many articles mentioned that the Skoog family was creating a workplace for hundreds of people. When a mine or a sawmill is established, papers are brimming with those headlines. Why is that? How come the newspapers’ narrative about Kust is not along the lines of “not only do they have hundreds of people on their payroll, they have also created a landmark that improves quality of life for people in Piteå”? The innovative part about the hotel façade working as a city lung, how it provides people with both a meeting place and jobs ought to be as exciting as other establishments. When Brändön Lodge in Luleå chooses to hire retired women from the village as cleaners, instead of a cleaning company, that is a commitment to improving the place across generations.
Economy is undoubtedly important, but is an economy that keeps on extracting natural resources more important than the future? What would happen if Mother Earth actually sat in on every board meeting? Would local communities and biological diversity get more of a say in things that way?
For decades primary industry and tech, but also the hospitality industry (we all remember the slogan “Europe’s last wilderness”) have marketed our region by highlighting natural resources and the quality of air, water, soil, animal life, and actually everything that Lyrhem states as missing from the modern economic system and its calculations. It seems obvious that these values should be included in the calculations for the future. Norrbotten was for a long time the top European region in the EU Social Progress Index – that is, a cutting-edge society – but last time it was measured, we had fallen to seventh place. The components that are measured in this index are those that inhabitants can be proud of. But by maintaining an economic model built on extraction, we undermine the progressive society linked to quality of life, biological diversity and democracy. What should be nurtured most of all risks being eroded when everything is speeded up and technical solutions are what is offered.
If Finland is the happiest country in the world, then Norrbotten could be the most flourishing region! Imagine if Sweden’s Arctic region would decide to lead the way to a new economic mindset – a worldview that would allow societies to thrive for real.
In Jukkasjärvi, in his hut next to a crackling fire, Nils Torbjörn Nutti explains how poor the Swedish language is, how the words fail to paint a picture.
– When I name a reindeer Bulmmot (snow bunting), which is ‘snösparv’ in Swedish, it’s because when I speak of that reindeer and it’s part of a herd, it has to be easy for other herders to understand which one I mean. The reindeer should look like a snow bunting, be a little short, fat and lazy, he says with a laugh.
His company is called Nutti Sámi Siida, where siida means both ‘Sami settlement’ and ‘community’. He runs the open outdoor museum Márkanbáiki, which is the Sami word for ‘meeting place’. There is a restaurant there called Ovttás, which can be translated as the English word ‘together’, but it is also the word for ‘a place to tell stories around a fire’. So many words related to hospitality, about inviting people to storytelling, places where you can sit down and learn from each other.
– In Sami culture the reindeer is at the centre. It’s what everything else revolves around. Nowadays I understand that when my father said “the reindeers you have, you must take care of” what he really meant was something much bigger. That by taking care of my reindeer I would also take care of the place where the reindeer live. Because everything is connected. And everything has always been connected.
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