137 ECONOMIC, ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY PERSP EXPANDED TOURISM SECTOR Professor Environment and Natural Resources, Faculty of Business, University of Iceland Dr. D. Cook Post-Doctoral Researcher, Environment and Natural Resources, Faculty of Economics, University of Iceland Dr. Inga Minelgaite Associate Professor Faculty of Business, University of Iceland Introduction bucket list, resulting in gradually growing numbers of tourists to this Nordic country (Mandle, 2018). In the period subsequent to the banking collapse of 2008 the largest in history relative to the size of its economy spiraling bankruptcies and unemployment threatened the sustainability and this crisis, the devaluation of the Icelandic krona (ISK) acted as a trigger point for the recovery of the nation (Minelgaite et al., 2018), with booming economic growth the fastest rate among OECD nations driven by the tourism sector. Iceland is now among the countries most economically reliant on tourism, with only four nations more dependent: Malta, Croatia, Thailand and Jamaica. The number of tourists more than quadrupled between 2010 and 2017, from 488,600 to 2,224,603 (Icelandic Tourist Board, 2018), a considerable number compared to the national population of only around 340,000 (Statistics Iceland, 2018). For the first time ever, tourism in Iceland in the period 2013-2017 was responsible for higher foreign exchange earnings (42% in 2017) than exports of marine products (16% in 2017), and over the same time period the number of people employed in the sector has increased by 68% ( contribution (direct and indirect) of the tourism sector to GDP amounted to 34.6% in 2017 and is projected to rise to 40.6% by 2028 (WTTC, 2018). Rapid growth in the Icelandic tourism sector invokes questions concerning its sustainability. As with other locations, tourism is promoted because of its positive economic impacts, both macro and microeconomic. However, it has become increasingly recognized that tourist activities and operations impose a number of negative effects on the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions, land-use changes and depletion of local water resources (Reddy and Wilkes, 2013). In his wide-ranging review of the academic literature on sustainable tourism, Buckley asserted that fundamental concern of sustainability is that aggregate human impacts threaten the survival of (Buckley, 2012, p. 529). No European nation typifies the tourist nature versus economy dilemma more than Iceland. Its exponential growth in visitor numbers, remote geographical position as an island in the North Atlantic, necessitating air and cruise ship travel, and its fragile ecosystems, shaped simultaneously by volcanic and glacial processes, combine to leave the nation both environmentally attractive and vulnerable. Moreover, remaining wildernesses, are entirely uninhabited. As such, tourism in Iceland is predominantly