2025| Jarkko Saarinen

The 2025 Finisterra Annual Lecture took place on 10 December and was delivered by Professor Jarkko Saarinen, from the University of Oulu (Finland), under the title “Critical Geographies of Sustainable Tourism”.

In his lecture, Saarinen critically examined sustainable tourism from a geographical perspective, highlighting the asymmetries between Global North and Global South contexts. He emphasised the high economic and environmental costs associated with air mobility in more developed countries and, on the other hand, the processes of commodification of local communities in African contexts, which are often integrated into the tourism economy without generating social benefits for the communities themselves.

About the speaker
Professor Jarkko Saarinen is a globally recognised scholar who has served as Chair of the Tourism Commission of the International Geographical Union and is a member of the editorial boards of journals such as Tourism Geographies, Annals of Tourism Research and Journal of Ecotourism. He is currently Director of the Arctic Frontiers and Global Resilience Research Programme (FRONT) at the University of Oulu and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

His research interests include tourism sustainability and development, tourism–community relations, tourism, resilience and climate change adaptation, political ecology, and community-based natural resource management.

The Annual Lecture and the awards ceremony once again provided an opportunity for sharing and celebrating scientific research in Geography. Finisterra thanks all participants in the Annual Lecture and the contributing authors who make Finisterra a leading academic journal.