Covid-19, tourism and the advocacy of degrowth

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the advocacy of degrowth in tourism, principally in relation to the emerging debates taking place in the light of the impact of Covid-19. It reviews the origins and meaning of degrowth as a development philosophy in order to place the discussion in a broader context. It proceeds to question some of the economic, environmental and cultural assumptions implicit and often explicit in degrowth advocacy with regard to tourism. The article argues that economic growth – in tourism and generally – is a necessary, albeit far from sufficient, condition for addressing the varied problems facing contemporary society manifest in modern tourism. There have been numerous publications, especially in the light of Covid-19, advocating tourism degrowth. There have been none directly questioning the claims made. It is hoped that this article will open up a discursive space for engagement between those who see economic growth as a part of the problem and those who see it as a part of the solution.

KEYWORDS:

• Degrowth
• consumerism
• growth
• COVID-19
• localism

Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic, and the response to it, have had a massive impact on the global economy. Tourism combines mobility and conviviality, the two things the pandemic has made problematic. It has been hit especially hard as a result. In response to this, many academics and commentators have shared their views on how the industry and governments could and should respond.

For some, recovery is paramount. The economic devastation makes retaining and regaining jobs and livelihoods an imperative. That view does not preclude reforms and new ways of working – note that the United Nations World Tourism Organisation calls for green growth – but nonetheless sees recovery through growth as a priority (UNWTO, 2020).

Many in the industry and policy making broadly see recovery in these terms. Rifat Alli, the director of industry analysts Skift, argues that the priority is to get the industry growing again. Ali is optimistic and has ‘zero doubt that the sector will recover and the world will bounce back to traveling, even if it takes a while to get back up and return to pre-coronavirus traveller numbers’ (Ali, 2020). His call for recovery is echoed by industry bodies, such as the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO, 2020) and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC, 2020), as well as many tourism companies of all sizes.

For others, a ‘new normal’ is considered the pressing priority – a ‘tourism reset’ that respects supposed natural limits and cultural boundaries, something they believe mass tourism has failed to do. This latter view has been prominent in academic journals (Everingham & Chassagne, 2020; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020a; Ioannides & Gyimóthy, 2020; Lew et al., 2020; Prideaux et al., 2020). Reform rather than recovery is emphasised. That reform often looks forward to a changed situation involving a diminished industry and lower levels of leisure mobility. This is in line with the development philosophy of degrowth.

This article sets out to outline the origins and assumptions of degrowth and provide a critical exposition of, and counter to, how they feature in contemporary discussions of tourism’s future in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is hoped this will contribute to a wider debate on such a pressing issue.

Degrowth as development philosophy

Degrowth is a distinctive political and philosophical approach to development that emphasises a smaller economy, localism and anti-consumerism as a radical corrective to the putative environmental and cultural problems afflicting modern society (Degrowth.info, n.d.; Kallis et al., 2018). The formal origin of degrowth as a specific concept is the 2008 Paris Conference (Paris Conference, 2008b). Participants called ‘for a paradigm shift from the general and unlimited pursuit of economic growth to the concept of ‘right sizing’ the global and national economies’ (Paris Conference, 2008a). There was and is no agreed size of the economy, but it is envisaged to be well below our current level of wealth in order to remain within assumed natural limits.

Whilst degrowth is, in the first instance, a call to downsize economic activity, it also involves a critique of a culture of consumerism (Hickel, 2020; Kallis et al., 2018). Moreover, the success of degrowth’s environmental aims is dependent upon that of its cultural project. This is succinctly expressed by Alexander:

[I]t seems highly unlikely that a degrowth or steady-state economy will ever arise voluntarily within cultures generally comprised of individuals seeking ever-higher levels of income and consumption. Accordingly, before growth economics can be overcome, this significant cultural obstacle must be acknowledged, confronted and somehow transcended. (2013, p. 228)

Degrowth advocacy typically alludes to the sort of cultural and social arrangements that would be needed for a different kind of economy based on degrowth principles. The most notable contribution to answering this is that of theorist Serge Latouche, who used the term conviviality to describe a slower, more localised society within which inter-personal culture would be enriched at a much lower level of consumption (2009). He argued that through diminishing growth and reorienting economies away from global markets towards a more localised basis, richer and more authentic human relationships could be forged. This involves a strong critique of consumerism, and the Frankfurt school theorists are sometimes invoked as shaping this outlook (Demaria et al., 2013).¹

Degrowth may be a relatively recent term with some distinctive features. However, it is also a part of a much wider set of ideas that share a critique of modern growth-oriented societies. That critique has emerged, consolidated and become mainstream in the period since the end of the second world war (Pepper, 1996). Concerns with growth emerged explicitly with the 1972 Limits to Growth report produced for the United Nations Club of Rome by a group of US academics (Meadows et al., 1972). The report modelled how economic growth was leading to the depletion of finite resources and claimed that continued growth would result in dire consequences for humanity. Whilst this is a mainstream view now, it was far less so in the early 1970s. For example, the Club of Rome distanced itself somewhat from warnings in the report (Bardi, 2011). There was a general optimism at the capacity for growth and scientific development to advance humanity (Judt, 2010). A year later, economist Schumacher’s influential Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered was published, setting out many of the environmental and cultural themes associated with degrowth today (1973/2010). For Schumacher, small-scale society was necessary for human dignity, spirituality and a sense of community, a view in line with his Catholic moral outlook and comparable to Latouche’s ‘conviviality’.

Degrowth is also closely aligned with ‘steady-state thinking’ on the economy, championed by the school of ecological economics from the 1980s (Costanza et al., 2014) (although it has a much longer and diverse history dating back to JS Mill in the nineteenth century). Quilley describes degrowth as a route to a steady-state succinctly: ‘The defining rationale of the steady-state economy is that the throughput of energy and materials and the spatial extent of human activities should be stabilised and gradually reduced. In short, the economy of our Improbable Valley must be significantly smaller than our Mount Impossible’ (2013, p. 280). A large drop in wealth, as measured by Gross National Product, is a key feature of degrowth thinking.

Degrowth’s roots lie much deeper, too. The nineteenth-century Romantic movement stood against the urban, rational, and brutal society ushered in by the industrial revolution (Ferber, 2010). There is a ‘prevailing romanticism  … in the theory and practice of degrowth’ – a perceived need to recover the individual within the mass through a reconnection with nature, and a critique of rational, planned, urban society (Heikkurinen, 2021, p. 367). Degrowth as an antidote to humanity’s estrangement from nature is a common theme (Heikkurinen, 2021; Kallis et al., 2018).

Some associate degrowth with Malthusianism (Phillips, 2015). Thomas Malthus had originally claimed in the 1820s that population would tend toward exponential growth whilst the capacity to grow food could only grow arithmetically due to natural limits. He postulated that this would lead to famine or war, which would rebalance the relationship. Malthus’s ideas have proved to be wrong (Shermer, 2016). In spite of the dramatic growth of the world’s population since he wrote, agricultural productivity has grown massively. What he believed to be natural limits have generally proved to be social ones, in the sense that human societies have been able to develop technology to push these limits progressively further back, creating conditions for material advancement (Phillips, 2019; Pinker, 2018). Of course, if average levels of consumption remain unchanged, then population growth contributes to economic growth. However, most advocates of degrowth reject any direct association with Malthusianism, whilst accepting that there are pressing naturally imposed limits upon how humanity acts in relation to the planet (Hickel, 2020). Rather than population growth per se, in an age of mass consumption, this sense of limits focuses on what the population consumes. This includes travel and tourism, a sector that is often associated with non-essential and conspicuous consumption. Degrowth depends, then, on a pressing sense of natural limits and a rejection of the idea that these limits can be made contingent upon technological and scientific advance.

Finally, it is instructive to briefly broach the question of degrowth as a form of social change rather than policy change. Degrowth, from its origins at the 2009 Paris Conference, has been critical of the growth imperative intrinsic to capitalism. Therefore, logically, degrowth could be said to be anti-capitalist in so far as ‘[c]apitalism as we know it is incompatible with degrowth’ (Kallis et al., 2018, p. 309, my italics). This leaves space for a range of reformist views, and even those advocating revolutionary change, in degrowth advocacy. In the academy, these often comprise ‘an action, or activist, research program’ (Kallis: 309).

This leaves open the question of what kind of critique of capitalism degrowth involves. From the 1960s, cultural critiques of consumerism and environmental critiques of growth became increasingly influential in, although not the only strands of, critical thought (Pepper, 1996). Critiques of capitalism increasingly emphasised growth as culturally and environmentally destructive. It is this tradition of critical thought that is represented in degrowth advocacy. But radical critiques have also endorsed growth. Post-second world war labour movements and social democracy throughout Europe drew on the legacy of Marx and Keynes to posit socialism or an expansive, reformed capitalism that would put the fruits of growth at the service of the people as a whole (Hobsbawm, 1995; Judt, 2010). Whilst this cannot be developed here, it should be noted that degrowth’s critique has itself been criticised, by both critics and advocates of capitalism, for a conservatism evident in its rejection of the social progress and material liberation borne of economic growth (McAfee, 2019; Milanovic, 2018; Phillips, 2015; Pinker, 2018).

Tourism degrowth

Degrowth advocacy in tourism should be viewed as the contribution that tourism can make to the broader degrowth project. It is notable that tourism was the subject of discussion amongst the originators of the degrowth movement at the 2008 Paris conference (Bourdeau & Berthelot, 2008). A number of others have written about degrowth in tourism prior to Covid-19 (Andriotis, 2018; Fletcher et al., 2019; Hall, 2009; Milano et al., 2019). Some academics have considered how the experience of the pandemic provides an opportunity to reflect on the need for and possibility of a degrown, more environmentally benign sector (Everingham & Chassagne, 2020; Fletcher et al., 2020; Ioannides & Gyimóthy, 2020; Prideaux et al., 2020). There are three key pillars of degrowth that have all featured in this important discussion: the imperative to degrow the economy; the challenge to consumerism, and; the promotion of economic relocalisation. These are discussed in turn below:

A degrown tourism: is less more?

Hall (2009) refers to degrowth as encompassing: the principle of equity; participatory democracy; respect for human rights and; respect for cultural differences. These general aims would be shared equally by many advocates of economic growth. It is important, to begin with the truism that degrowth seeks to achieve a version of these through a substantial reduction in economic activity and output.

The Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) argues that Covid-19 may be an opportunity to consider the need for tourism degrowth. They argue that ‘[e]ven if the Covid-19 crisis ends relatively soon, we cannot afford to return to levels of travel experienced previously, particularly by the wealthiest segment of the world’s population. This is not only because of the discontent overtourism understandably provoked, but also because of the industry’s environmental damages (including climate change as well as pollution and resource depletion) which were already beyond unsustainable’ (Fletcher et al., 2020). POLLEN argues to ‘reign in the tourism industry on a macro and structural level’, and that ‘we need to use this moment to proactively plan for voluntary tourism downsizing beyond the current crisis as part of an overarching society-wide degrowth programme in pursuit of post-capitalism’ (Fletcher et al., 2020). They strikingly call for ‘direct restrictions on the quantity of mass transport – and especially airplanes – reaching a given destination’ (Fletcher et al., 2020).

These authors emphasise redistribution whilst seeking to degrow the global economy as a whole, an emphasis shared with recent writing on degrowth (Hickel, 2020; Kallis et al., 2020). This is premised on the view that humanity has more than enough wealth if distributed on a more egalitarian basis, and also that redistribution of a smaller amount of wealth and productive capacity, with that productive capacity redirected to ends deemed socially desirable and sustainable, can be part of a progressive societal transformation (Hickel, 2020; Kallis et al., 2020).

The case for a redistribution of income is strong, but not restricted to degrowth advocacy. Inequality is fundamentally a political question, not an inevitable consequence of growth (Milanovic, 2018; Phillips, 2015). That redistribution of wealth accompanied by degrowth is progressive, is challenged by World Bank economist and expert on inequality, Branko Milanovic. He calculates that if everyone earned the same, we would each earn around $5,500 per person per year (Milanovic, 2020). Of course, degrowth advocates do not argue that everyone should earn exactly the same, but Milanovic argues that this surprising figure reveals that the corollary of degrowth is austerity. By contrast, economic advancement – more wealth, and more of it in the hands of the masses to satisfy needs and wants – has most often been the aspiration of progressive political parties of the Left, liberation movements and trade unions throughout history (Phillips, 2015). It should be noted too that rapid economic growth in China and India has meant that the gap between rich and poor globally has narrowed in recent decades, in spite of the opposite being true within most individual countries, China and India included.

In the global South Covid-19 and measures taken to mitigate it are currently devastating the poorest. The United Nations has predicted that hundreds of millions of people are becoming impoverished by the economic effects of policies to lock down societies. The World Food Program points out that a ‘hunger pandemic’ could eclipse the effects of Covid-19 (Anthem, 2020). Some 130 million people are predicted to join the 135 million who were already expected to suffer from acute hunger in 2020 (Anthem, 2020). Tourism and hospitality employment is significant in this. Around 1.3 billion out of a global population of 7.8 billion lack access to electricity, and three billion cook over open fires with charcoal or dung. The impact on health and opportunity is appalling. Critics of degrowth argue that tackling such poverty requires transformative economic development, for which growth is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition (Milanovic, 2018).

Yet for Latouche

Degrowth must apply to the South as much as to the North if there is to be any chance to stop southern societies from rushing up the blind ally of growth economics. Where there is still time, they should aim not for development but for disentanglement [… ..]. If the South is to attempt to create non-growth societies, it must rethink and relocalise. (2004)

The same sentiment is found in tourism studies amongst those arguing for tourism that facilitates the relocalisation of agriculture and discourages modern farming techniques (Ateljevic, 2020; Fletcher et al., 2020), or who warn poorer countries aspiring to a ‘western’ growth-oriented development model (Everingham & Chassagne, 2020).

In attempting to address environmental problems, degrowth sentiments may involve neglecting human needs. This is a point made firmly by Aramberri (2010). Referring to post-second world war developments on the Spanish Costa del Sol, he counters the critics of growth-oriented mass tourism: ‘[T]he tourism industry offered better living opportunities than tilling the fields in endless days of misery’ (Aramberri, 2010, p. 337). Tourism growth of the sort decried by degrowth advocates met people’s ‘ … desire to have a better life in places where good schools and adequate health care would be provided’ (Aramberri, 2010, p. 337). In suggesting that economically poorer countries, too, should adopt a version of degrowth in their approach to the tourism industry, its advocates often fail to address the aspirations and desires of the poor themselves.

Tourism degrowth versus consumer culture

The advocacy of tourism degrowth takes in not only a critique of growth, but of the culture and cultural consequences of growth – as noted earlier, degrowth is simultaneously an economic and cultural idea. Two strands are considered below: anti-consumerism, and Latouche’s notion of conviviality.

Advocates of tourism degrowth view growth as resulting from and fuelling a damaging consumerism. The remarkable growth in the consumption of holidays is regarded with a very critical eye. This is a cultural script that has been picked up and developed in the midst of Covid-19. In this vein, Higgins-Desbiolles blames the ‘culture-ideology of consumerism’ (2010), by which consumption patterns that were once the preserve of the rich become endemic. That the ability to afford luxuries is deemed a problem reverses the assumption held by previous generations that raising the opportunities for more people to partake of luxury was de facto a good thing, marking social progress. Of course the large majority of the world’s population are not part of the ‘culture ideology of consumerism’, principally because they are poor.

Pernecky argues that ‘our momentary loss of tourism may bring with it a renewed appreciation and care, which has been eroded by rampant commodification and comatose consumerism’ (2020, p. 657). Everingham and Chassagne also see Covid-19 as an ‘[o]pportunity both politically and publicly to change our lifestyle, and the failing economic model that supports it’ (2020, p. 564). Chassagne argues that:

Coronavirus has forced an immediate scale-down of how we travel and live. People are forging local connections, shopping locally, working from home and limiting consumption to what they need […] [O]ur scaled-down lives may become the ‘new normal’. Many people may realise that consumption and personal well-being are not inextricably linked. (2020)

These sentiments have been commonplace in the academic literature on degrowth. Latouche shares the cultural critique of tourism:

Travelitis, or our obsession with travelling further and further, faster and faster, and more and more often (and always for less) is a largely artificial need that has been created by supermodern life, exacerbated by the media and stimulated by travel agencies and tour operators, and it must be revised downwards. (2009:, p. 39)

In this vein, the tourist is described in one article not as a rational, pleasure-seeking holidaymaker but instead as ‘[d]riven by restlessness, boredom and new ways to escape reality, […] perpetually seeking new experiences’ (Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019, p. 1931). The authors bemoan the fact that ‘[t]he desire to seek more and more novel ways of stimulating the senses through travel […] continues to go unchallenged’ (Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019, pp. 1931–1932). This presents tourist culture as a negative reaction to the alienation of modern life rather than a positive, aspirational choice. Once regarded in this way, taking fewer holidays can be presented less as a sacrifice we may or may not have to make and more of a cultural opportunity.

Yet others view ‘consumerism’ and growth in tourism in a positive light and consider arguments to reign it in as elitist rather than radical (Aramberri, 2010; Butcher, 2003, 2020a, 2020b). This perspective was expressed forcefully by US civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, favourably quoting social democratic theorist (and prominent UK Labour politician) Anthony Crosland:

My working-class constituents have their own version of the environment, which is equally valid and which calls for economic growth. They want lower housing densities and better schools and hospitals. They want washing machines and refrigerators to relieve domestic drudgery. They want cars, and the freedom they give on weekends and holidays. And they want package-tour holidays to Majorca, even if this means more noise of night flights and eating fish and chips on previously secluded beaches – why should they too not enjoy the sun? And they want these things not […] because their minds have been brainwashed and their tastes contrived by advertising, but because the things are desirable in themselves. (Crosland, cited in Rustin, 1976)

In the decades after the second world war, workers in the more economically developed countries spent their increasing wages on mass-produced washing machines, televisions, cars and record players. They bought package holidays, which they took in the extended holiday provision they were able to win for themselves through democracy and struggle in an expanding economy (Hobsbawm, 1995; Judt, 2010). A clear exposition of the cultural benefits of growth is Hans Rosling’s infamous ‘washing machine’ video, in which he takes the purchase of a washing machine by his mother in Sweden (freeing her from domestic drudgery) as a metaphor for the labour-saving lifestyle that the masses started to be able to afford during the post-second world war boom, a period characterised by consistent economic growth.² An easier life, freer from the rigours of domestic chores, enabled greater freedoms, education and choices over how to live. Millions travelled abroad for the first time in the ‘holiday revolution’ (Bray & Raitz, 2001). Prior to this, working-class men travelled abroad only to fight in wars, and women rarely at all. This is the positive cultural legacy of the ‘consumerism’ made possible by consistent economic growth. ‘Travelitis’ seems a rather pejorative view of these developments (Latouche, 2009, p. 39).

Latouche emphasised ‘conviviality’ as degrowth’s alternative to consumerism (2009). Conviviality, for him, is a more authentic connection between people in a community through a slower, more localised society with much lower consumption. Put simply, he argues that a society based on economic growth and ‘consumerism’ limits our capacity to relate to one another authentically, and hence there is a need to degrow, relocalise, and alter society fundamentally.

Something approaching Latouche’s view of more authentic human contact has a long tradition in sociological studies of tourism and the tourist, such as MacCannell (1976/1999); Cohen (1979); Krippendorf (1987); Wearing et al. (2009) and many others. Today degrowth advocates associate small-scale tourism with the sort of cultural advantages, Latouche links to degrowth generally (Everingham & Chassagne, 2020; Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019). For example, Chassagne and Everingham (2019) see a role for small-scale tourism in promoting Buen Vivir. Buen Vivir refers to a philosophy associated with some indigenous rural Latin American communities, involving an affirmation of community, Latouche’s conviviality, ecocentrism and a harmony with nature. It is critical of extractivism and modern ‘neoliberal’ capitalism, and is invoked as a counter to growth-oriented societies (Chassagne & Everingham, 2019).

There is a counter narrative. Modern society has witnessed struggles for time and resources through which individuals can develop their own leisure lives. There is, put simply, a view of leisure as agency, that counters the leisure as structure emphasis of the critics of unauthentic, growth-led tourism. Leisure as agency is the basis for important strands within cultural studies, which argue for consumption as playing an important role in expressing our humanity and developing our individuality (Miles, 1998). Also, Sociologist Georg Simmel captured the essence of a conviviality without the ascetic implications of degrowth. Simmel saw it as democratic, playful; the moment when an individual’s pleasure is contingent on the joy of others, be it one’s friends, loved ones or children. It is, he argued, to exult in the sheer pleasure of the company of others (1949). If the Covid-19 pandemic has largely cancelled conviviality, then recovery and growth – not degrowth – is the way to recover this.

In relation to Buen Vivir, claims made for the notion that rural cultures provide models for living better with less are contested. Ecuador, the society Chassagne and Everingham (2019) discuss, is a democracy that has experienced economic growth based on extractive industries and modern agriculture (its largest export industries). Also, Buen Vivir as an indigenous rural culture, and Buen Vivir as an idea adopted by academics and governments, are not necessarily the same thing (Owen, 2019). As Milton (1996) has argued, there is a tendency in western environmentalist thought to view rural cultures as embodying deeply held philosophies and distinct cultural choices, rather than as particular cultural adaptations to specific social and historical circumstances, and hence as pragmatic and changeable.

Conviviality has also been connected to technologies appropriate for a degrown society – degrowth is not anti-technology per se. For Ivan Illich, ‘convivial technologies’ should enable a modern subsistence society featuring voluntary simplicity, one less dependent on markets and the state (see Vetter, 2018). Again, there are critics of this view. Whilst degrowth may be a rejection of growth, not technology – with ‘convivial technology’ used to enable a more convivial society – Campbell has critiqued this thinking through a discussion of what he terms ‘modern primitivism’ (Campbell, 1998). He describes this as a celebration of the local, rooted and ‘natural’ – located in imaginaries of the third world, particularly Africa – alongside a recognition of the advantages of modern technology in enabling this vision. This sentiment, he argues, emerged in the West ‘primarily as a response to profound despair towards the advancement of western society’ (Campbell, 1998, p. 7). Here, degrowth’s version of conviviality, enabled by ‘convivial technology’, is a cultural assumption that emerges in the developed West about how all should live. It has big implications for poorer societies that do not enjoy the fruits of modern development. This argument is pertinent with regard to tourism degrowth, where sometimes the advocacy of small scale, local ‘eco’ projects forecloses discussion of the possibilities from growth led, transformative change (Butcher, 2007).

Localism/relocalisation

An aspect of degrowth that has been raised in responses to the Covid-19 pandemic is localism, specifically the argument that economic activity should, in certain ways, be ‘relocalised’ and delinked from a global economy dominated by growth-seeking corporations. The promotion of localism in tourism is very well established in literature on sustainable tourism (Butcher, 2007). Covid-19, and in particular the dire impact on regions with a large tourism economy, is seen by degrowth advocates as an additional reason to follow this path. For example, the Political Ecology Network argue that ‘effort should […] aim to re-localize economic activity to make destinations less vulnerable to vicissitudes of global markets generally’ (Fletcher et al., 2020).

There is a case for some relocalisation of economic activity. In the light of Covid-19, there is a broader discussion about reigning in globalisation in some areas to ensure that in times of crisis a nation is able to ensure its citizens have access to necessities (Gray, 2020). Regions and nations have often sought to diversify their economies to mitigate overreliance on certain industries. However, the notion that re-localising economic activity would make destinations less vulnerable to pandemics is questionable. Covid-19 has generally meant people can no more visit hotels, restaurants and attractions in their own locality than they can travel abroad. Neither is re-localising economic activity desirable. The growth of international leisure travel for growing numbers of people has been a tremendous success story, driven by people’s desire to see the world and relax in their time off (Zuelow, 2015).

One recent article reflecting on Covid-19, tourism and the transition to a greener, degrown world sees linking tourism to relocalised, regenerative agriculture as a way to make both tourism and farming more sustainable (Ateljevic, 2020). This may be a feasible economic objective in very specific cases, but as a general strategy, or development principal, it is not tenable. To approach the productivity of modern agricultural techniques, regenerative agriculture would require great labour intensivity. It is not scalable without reversing a lot of the agricultural and general social progress of the modern age. Green, organic holidays linked to a romantic vision of rural life are wholly unproblematic as a private choice, but as part of a public advocacy for sustainable development, it denies the economic progress and benefits for millions arising from Fordist international mass tourism (Butcher, 2007). This example is not an outlier, but is typical of the advocacy of small scale, growth-critical ‘green’ tourism as a part of a progressive development model associated with ‘sustainable tourism’ (Butcher, 2007).

The focus on relocalisation and localism also limits the capacity of degrowth thinking to address the prominent issue of climate change. It is undeniably true that if people fly less often on their holidays, then their carbon footprint will decrease, and this has led to research on how to bring about this change (e.g. Gössling et al., 2019) as well as warnings against the resumption of air travel on its previous trajectory post Covid-19 (e.g. Hall et al., 2020). But there are other pertinent issues, some of which often lie outside of this framing: flights are a small part of total carbon emissions derived from human activity; they are more difficult, technologically, to address than manufacturing, households, cars, etc; air travel facilitates innovation and generates wealth that itself can be used to develop clean energy technology; tourism generally generates a great deal of wealth that contributes to wellbeing and also societies’ capacity to innovate and mitigate; people desire to travel.

The key issue with regard to climate change is not the level of growth but the generation of clean energy. The question of clean energy itself is best and perhaps can only be considered at a national and international level – the economies of scale available are vast and relocalisation makes no sense here. Its generation depends upon massive investment in science and technology and in new infrastructure. In turn, each of these depends on and constitutes, growth. Put simply, it is very far from clear that degrowth can address climate change adequately. In so far as it does through reducing economic activity, it does so at the expense of the prospects for cheap, ‘clean’ energy that could decouple growth from emissions, and to the detriment of tackling poverty (Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015).

Notably, growing countries are at the forefront of developing clean energy solutions to environmental problems. There are success stories and great potential here that depend on economic growth. Poland, currently dependant on burning coal for around 75% of its electricity (with dire implications for health), has in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic announced a nuclear programme that will reduce that figure to well under a third by 2040 (Reuters, 2020). This is only possible due to consistent growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) since just a few years after the collapse of the communism. Helen Mountford of the World Resources Institute cites Indonesia as an example of a country that has ‘identified a low-carbon growth pathway, which goes beyond the country’s current climate commitments and would deliver an average GDP growth rate of over six per cent per year from now until 2045’ (Mountford, 2020). In this case, higher growth incorporates clean energy and better public transport, with the additional potential to unlock economic, social and environmental benefits including ‘more than 15 million additional jobs – which are greener and higher paying – faster poverty reduction, and gender and regional benefits’ (Mountford, 2020).

Degrowth would undermine development and also the capacity of these countries to progressively decouple growth from emissions, an aim that current technology makes eminently possible, and that is necessary if both environmental issues and poverty are to be tackled (Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015). This decoupling is possible, too, in the case of air travel, based on investment on new technology. Whilst battery technology may be problematic for air travel in the short and medium term for larger aircraft, liquid hydrogen offers the prospect of low or carbon-neutral flying (Ambrose, 2020; Collins & McLarty, 2020; Petrescu et al., 2020; Verstraete, 2015).

Localism has its merits, but cannot address the key issue of a cleaner modernity able to provide for material aspirations. It logically focuses on resources at the point of use, at a local level, rather than the generation of new resources at a national and global level through scientific and technological advance. This is the Malthusian mistake – an emphasis on humanity as users of natural resources necessitating a contraction of their environmental footprint in order to remain within nature’s limits, coupled with a lack of recognition of the role of humanity in creatively reorganising our relationship to nature to address problems at higher levels of development (Phillips, 2015).

Conclusion

Writing on tourism degrowth focuses on industry policies, often in particular localities. Therefore wider theorisations of social change are not generally well developed. Nonetheless, the radical, even anti-capitalist, tone adopted by some writers on tourism degrowth is notable (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020b). The provisional critique of tourism degrowth presented here is neither an endorsement nor a critique of specific policies in particular places. Neither is it an endorsement nor a critique of contemporary capitalism or any notional alternative. It is a defence of the need for expansive, growth-oriented thinking on leisure mobility in a world in which the majority remain poor and in which Covid-19 has plunged millions into desperation through decimating economic activity.

Whilst degrowth is a contested philosophy elsewhere (Milanovic, 2018, 2020; Phillips, 2019, 2015), in tourism studies it faces no direct counter. Its advocates are correct that growth is not the sine qua non of a free and fulfilled society – far from it (Peet & Hartwick, 2015). But whilst economic growth is not a sufficient condition for a better tourism post Covid-19, there are strong arguments for it being a necessary one. Tourism degrowth would contribute to poverty, adding austerity to the dire effects of Covid-19. It recognises deep-seated problems in modern market societies, but its solution involves a retreat from very positive aspects of modernity such as mobility, economies of scale, division of labour, specialisation and scientific innovation. Further, a retreat from growth and relocalisation of economies would reduce the capacity of states to mitigate environmental damage and develop cheap, clean energy, progressively decoupling growth from emissions.

Tourism degrowth advocacy takes a dim view of the legacy of mass tourism, viewing it as part of a generally destructive consumerism. This is, to say the least, one sided. It diminishes the rich tourist cultures that are a part of modern life, and the tourists too, the latter assumed to be objects acted upon by rapacious companies rather than individuals shaping their own lives.

Tourism degrowth offers an alternative, but not an advance on the tourism that we have or had pre Covid-19. As a development outlook, it has lost sight of the goal of enabling greater liberty, in this case, the liberty to travel for leisure. A truly progressive and visionary development outlook would champion and look to extend this liberty whilst harnessing the technological and economic resources in our flawed modernity to address environmental imperatives.

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Notes on contributors

Jim Butcher

Jim Butcher writes and researches on tourism at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. He blogs on this and other issues at http://politicsoftourism.blogspot.com/

Notes

1 It should be noted that the Frankfurt School did not see the consumerism they critiqued as intrinsic to growth, and were not against economic growth.

2 Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZoKfap4g4w.