Ecotourism after nature: Anthropocene tourism as a new capitalist “fix”

Abstract

How does ecotourism – conventionally characterized by its pursuit of a “natural” experience – confront assertions that “nature is over” attendant to growing promotion of the “Anthropocene”? One increasingly prominent strategy is to try to harness this “end of nature” itself as a novel tourism “product”. If the Anthropocene is better understood as the Capitalocene, as some contend, then this strategy can be viewed as a paradigmatic example of disaster capitalism in which crises precipitated by capitalist processes are themselves exploited as new forms of accumulation. In this way, engagement with the Anthropocene becomes the latest in a series of spatio-temporal “fixes” that the tourism industry can be seen to provide to the capitalist system in general. Here I explore this dynamic by examining several ways in which the prospect of the loss of “natural” resources are promoted as the basis of tourism experience: disaster tourism; extinction tourism; voluntourism; development tourism; and, increasingly, self-consciously Anthropocene tourism as well. Via such strategies, Anthropocene tourism exemplifies capitalism’s astonishing capacity for self-renewal through creative destruction, sustaining itself in a “post-nature” world by continuing to market social and environmental awareness and action even while shifting from pursuit of nonhuman “nature” previously grounding these aims.

Keywords:

• Anthropocene
• ecotourism
• disaster
• capitalism
• Capitalocene
• voluntourism

Introduction

In the 2009 climate change docudrama The Age of Stupid (Armstrong, 2009), a British couple travels to France to take a tour of a shrinking glacier. Their guide, a local man who has led excursion to the same glacier for decades, relates how he has witnessed the glacier progressively recede over the time he has observed it. Deeply disturbed by their experience, the British couple return home to continue their work as environmental activists and resolve to stop traveling by airplane as a result of what they have witnessed.

In this way, as the glacier they visited shrinks, the commercial tourism industry designed around it shifts from selling an encounter with the glacier per se to selling an experience of its imminent disappearance. In other words, the tour becomes less about getting in touch with a spectacular “nature”, as in the past, than of experiencing the loss of this nature in the face of human-induced change. A subtle difference with profound implications, this dynamic points to the subject I wish to address in this article: how ecotourism, as a form of tourism centered on selling an encounter with natural spaces, is responding to increasing assertions that we now live in a new age – the so-called “Anthropocene” – portending the “end of nature” itself. As with the French glacier tour described above, I contend, a common strategy seems to entail shifting from selling an encounter with nature to selling an experience of the end of this nature as a novel tourism “product”. In this way, I argue, the rise of Anthropocene tourism can be understood as a significant form of “disaster capitalism” seeking to transform the ostensive threat posed by Anthropocenic changes to the future of (eco)tourism into new opportunities for further tourism expansion. Consequently, engagement with the Anthropocene becomes the latest in a series of spatio-temporal “fixes” that the tourism industry provides to the capitalist system in general.

While my analysis is grounded in two decades of empirical research concerning a variety of tourism dynamics in diverse locations (e.g., Fletcher 2011a, 2011b, 2014), the material presented here is drawn primarily from secondhand sources. I begin by reviewing growing discussion of the Anthropocene in both natural and social sciences and the introduction of the concept into tourism studies specifically. I then outline the conceptual framework, a synthetic Marxist-poststructuralist political ecology, informing my analysis. After this I describe how tourism development tends to function as a form of “fix” or “disaster capitalism” in relation to assertions that the Anthropocene should be more properly labeled the “Capitolocene” due to the epoch’s imbrication within industrial capitalism. I then outline several emerging forms of tourism that can be seen to market “the end of nature” ostensibly signaled by the Anthropocene as one of their central “products”. Some of these relate to ecotourism specifically while others concern efforts to sell an experience of the end of nature more broadly. I end by exploring the implications of analysis for future research and practice concerning tourism development in this bold new “post-nature” (Wapner, 2010) age.

Touring the Anthropocene

The arrival of the “Anthropocene” has become a substantial focus of critical social scientific discussion in recent years (see e.g. Braun, 2015; Castree, 2014a, 2014b; Cook, Rickards, & Rutherfurd, 2015; Lorimer, 2015). First advanced by geologists, most notably Paul Crutzen, at the turn of the century (Crutzen, 2002; Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000), the Anthropocene thesis is essentially the assertion that human influence has so come to dominate all nonhuman processes that it can now be potentially identified as a distinct layer in the geological record and thus should designate our movement from the Holocene into a new epoch characterized by this pervasive human signature. It builds on an earlier contention by journalist Bill McKibbon (1989) that expansion of human influence – particularly in terms of anthropogenic climate change – has precipitated the “end of nature” as a distinct self-willed force altogether. Contemporary discussion of the Anthropocene contains quite similar proclamations that “Nature is Over” (Walsh, 2012) or that “Nature no longer runs the earth. We do” (Lynas, 2011, p. 12; in Castree, 2014b, p. 13). The concept is also caught up in growing discussion of the “Great Acceleration” threatening “planetary boundaries” (Steffen et al., 2011) as well as fears about a worsening “sixth extinction crisis” (Kolbert, 2014) or even the prospect of “biological annihilation” (Ceballos, Ehrlich, & Dirzo, 2017) altogether. Despite early debate concerning its validity as a scientific descriptor, over the last decade the Anthropocene concept has become increasingly accepted in both popular and academic fora wherein exploration of its implications for both the natural and social sciences has exploded (see e.g. Castree, 2014a; Lorimer, 2015; Moore, 2015a; Ogden et al., 2013; Wapner, 2014; Zalasiewicz et al., 2008).

Yet the concept has also been criticized on a variety of grounds. Malm and Hornborg, among others, call attention to how it may obfuscate the ways that different groups are disproportionately responsible for and impacted by Anthropocenic changes, asserting that a homogenous “humanity seems far too slender an abstraction to carry the burden of causality” (Malm & Hornborg, 2014, p. 65). In particular, some Indigenous peoples claim that the Anthropocene frame overlooks not only the ways in which they bear a disproportionate burden of recent impacts but also how “in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we already suffered other kinds of anthropogenic environmental change at the hands of settlers, including changes associated with deforestation, forced removal and relocation, containment on reservations” (Whyte, forthcoming, p. 3). In a similar vein, some suggest that the label is too ahistorical in neglecting to point out that the vast majority of the changes it identifies have occurred within and been caused by the age of industrial capitalism (Moore, 2016). Others have critiqued the concept as a fiction of human hubris refuted by evidence demonstrating the very limited control humans actually exert over many ecosystemic processes. Still others accept the concept yet contend that it points to the need for humans to reign in their actions rather than extending them further to exercise the “planetary stewardship” many call for in response to Anthropocene concerns (see Wuerthner, Crist, & Butler, 2014, 2015).

Only recently has the Anthropocene become a subject of tourism studies specifically (see Gren & Huijbens, 2014, 2016; Moore, 2015b, 2015c). In a first foray into the discussion, Gren and Huijbens asserted that “tourism policy and practice in the Anthropocene…implies that tourism needs to be measured up in specific relation to the boundaries and limits vis-à-vis the Earth and humanity at the global scale” (2014, p. 12). Indeed, from this perspective tourism development can be understood as itself a significant driver of Anthropocenic changes: “In Anthropocene understanding, modern tourism is a geophysical force which has contributed to the reshaping of the Earth for human purposes and to climate change” (Gren & Huijbens, 2014, p. 4). A subsequent edited volume then expanded substantially on these themes in various ways (Gren & Huijbens, 2016).

One of the consequences of considering the Anthropocene from a tourism perspective, for many, is the demand to take seriously the industry’s impact upon planetary systems and the consequently urgent need to develop a far more sustainable tourism. Thus Gren and Huibens assert that it is “necessary to deepen the debate on sustainability in and of tourism by addressing the existing problems from the perspective of the geophysical forces of humanity and the Earth in the Anthropocene” (2014, p. 13). Amelia Moore (2015b, p. 8), similarly, finds “the Anthropocene idea reflected in contemporary sustainable tourism via new products and processes within the industry as it attempts to expand into new areas and produce new clients”. Among other dynamics, she points to emergence of what she styles “the new ecotourism” in “what is still commonly referred to as ‘sustainable tourism’…characterized by tourist ventures that now consciously address some of the contradictions inherent in the industry and the growing preoccupation with global change through destination design or branding” (Moore, 2015b, p. 9). She asserts, “In this way, the advent of ecotourism…over the past few decades is but the beginning of a rearticulation of development design in the name of coming to terms with anthropogenic planetary change” (Moore, 2015c, p. 516).

In this article I seek to contribute to this burgeoning discussion by building particularly on Moore’s work to further interrogate some of the “new products and processes” that she highlights as characterizing an emergent Anthropocenic tourism. Specifically, I explore how novel forms of Anthropocene tourism seek to sustain capital accumulation in the face of new challenges posed by Anthropocenic changes themselves. These challenges – in the form of climate change calling into question the viability of long-haul air transport upon which the global tourism industry depends, for instance, leading to calls for reduced visitation or even “stay-at-home” tourism (see e.g. Gren & Huibens, 2016b; Hall, 2016) – affect the tourism industry as a whole of course but have particular implications for ecotourism – tourism focused specifically on selling “nature-based” experiences to support biodiversity conservation and community development (see Honey, 2008) – that have yet to be fully interrogated.

One of the main implications of the Anthropocene concept, after all, has been to call into question the characteristically modern, Western conceptual divide between “nature” and “culture” understood as diametrically opposite realms (Castree, 2014b; Latour, 2014). And it is of course in this very nature-culture dualism that the central appeal of ecotourism, entailing a quest to cross the conceptual divide from “culture” into an ostensibly unpeopled “wilderness” at the heart of an autonomous “nature”, has long been grounded (Fletcher, 2014; West & Carrier, 2004). As Hall explain, “The commodification of nature as spectacle by tourism is clearly integral to nature-based tourism, where representations of, and connection to, places, people and causes has long been mediated through commodified images” (2016, p. 56). If the advent of the Anthropocene means that we are now “after nature”, as Purdy (2015) contends, what does this then imply for the future of an ecotourism that has always entailed pursuit of this very nature, however elusive or even illusory it may actually be? And how might this ostensive “end of nature” forms the basis for other novel Anthropocenic tourism “products” as well?

This question is particularly pertinent given that ecotourism is increasingly appealed to as a key means to address growing environmental and social problems in pursuit of sustainable development. It is also commonly considered one of the main forms of financial and institutional support for protected areas seeking to preserve ostensibly pristine natural spaces and the often endangered nonhuman species they harbor (Fletcher, 2014; Hall, 2016; Honey, 2008). The “end of nature” thus paradoxically threatens not only ecotourism itself but the practice’s contribution to help stave off the environmental degradation seen to precipitate this nature’s end. Even more problematically, ecotourism has been described as contributing to exacerbating this very degradation. Hall observes, “Often despite, and in some cases perhaps because of, the very good intentions of those who seek to use tourism as a conservation tool, tourism is deeply embedded within processes of human-driven species loss that look set to become Earth’s sixth great extinction event” (2016, p. 54). given that “many of the factors linked to biodiversity loss such as land clearance, pollution and climate change are also related to tourism development” (2016, p. 56). In multiple ways, therefore, the advent of the Anthropocene can be seen to significantly threaten the future of the ecotourism industry.

All may not be lost, however. In this article, I argue that tourism promoters may be working to sustain the industry in the face of Anthropocenic threats by shifting focus from selling an encounter with the “wild nature” the Anthropocene threatens to render obsolete to selling a confrontation with the end of this nature itself. In this way, the ostensive threat posed by the Anthropocene to the ecotourism industry’s future may be paradoxically transformed into an opportunity for further expansion. The spectre of the Anthropocene is increasingly used to sell other experiences beyond ecotourism specifically as well. Below, I explain how this occurs. First, however, I describe the conceptual framework in which my analysis is grounded.

Political ecology after nature

In line with this special issue’s overarching theme, my analysis is grounded in a political ecology perspective. Political ecology is an interdisciplinary field of study that explores the interconnections among social, cultural, political, economic and environmental processes at different levels and scales (see Bryant, 2015; Perreault, Bridge, & McCarthy, 2015). While the field comprises many different streams of analysis, two of the most prominent draw on Marxist and poststructuralist (mostly Foucaultian) perspectives, respectively. In this first stream, researchers have long sought to describe how a capitalist political economy harnesses natural resources in pursuit of capital accumulation (Heynen, McCarthy, Robbins, & Prudham, 2007). In the second stream, meanwhile, one of the main efforts has been to problematize the modern nature-cultural dichotomy and the way it shapes both human–environment relations and the forms of natural resource management these inspire (Braun & Castree, 2001; Escobar, 1999). In a formative article not-coincidentally titled “After Nature”, Arturo Escobar (1999) endorses an “antiessentialist political ecology” that does not take a stable external “nature” as its referent, as in much conventional ecological science, but instead explores how distinctions between different processes are defined and materialized via environmental policy and practice. While at times these two streams of analysis have proceeded in parallel, increasingly they have been brought together to describe strategies for environmental management as the expression of a particular discourse and mode of production simultaneously. Combined, the two perspectives thus afford a synthetic perspective on the dynamics via which different cultural perspectives and political economic programs come together to shape environmental practices in particular places and times.

Political ecology has a long pedigree of application within tourism studies (Stonich, 1998) but only recently has the perspective become prominent with the publication of several books employing it in sustained series of analyses (Fletcher, 2014; Mostafanezhad, Norum, Shelton, & Thompson-Carr, 2016; Nepal & Saarinen, 2016). Within this growing political ecology of tourism one finds a similar overlap between Marxist and poststructuralist perspectives as in political ecology more generally. Bringing these two perspectives together, then, affords an understanding of tourism development as both the embodiment of a particular discursive perspective and approach to human–environment relations and a political–economic process entailing pursuit of capital accumulation. In describing the ways that growing discussion of the Anthropocene simultaneously complicates a nature-culture dichotomy and harnesses this complication as the basis for renewed accumulation via creation of novel tourism “products”, this article’s analysis can thus be seen to follow Escobar in exploring the potential of a “political ecology after nature” to productively elucidate contemporary socioecological processes.

Disaster capitalocene

As previously noted, one of the main criticisms of the Anthropocene concept is that it presents an apolitical frame obscuring the fact that the transformative effects it highlights are not due to human activity as a whole but more specifically to the relentlessly colonizing expansion of industrial capitalism. Donna Haraway, Jason Moore and others thus assert that this epoch should more properly be termed the “Capitalocene” (Moore, 2016). ¹ From this perspective, the rise of Anthropocene ecotourism may be viewed as a form of “disaster capitalism” par excellence. Disaster capitalism is Naomi Klein’s (2007) popular term for a particular form of capitalism that seeks to harness crises created by capitalist processes themselves as opportunities for further accumulation. She thus defines disaster capitalism as “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting marketing opportunities” (2007, p. 6). As this definition implies, Klein sees this dynamic as particularly characteristic of capitalism’s current neoliberal phase, wherein in addition to being harnessed as sources of new accumulation, disasters are also often used to justify further neoliberalization (i.e. privatization, marketization, commodification – see Castree, 2008) in a vicious cycle of escalating crisis.

The global tourism industry can be seen as one of the world’s most effective and creative forms of disaster capitalism, by means of which a variety of problems precipitated by capitalist development are transformed into new “products” for tourist marketing and consumption (see Büscher & Fletcher, 2017; Fletcher, 2011a). Paradigmatic examples include slum tourism, in which the poverty created by unequal geographic development (Harvey, 2006; Smith, 2006) becomes the basis of voyeuristic tourism focused on experiencing this same poverty (Büscher & Fletcher, 2017; Dürr & Jaffe, 2012), and war tourism, in which tourists are transported to the conflict zones fueled by a massively lucrative weapons industry (Fletcher, 2011b). In this way, tourism can be understood as providing a series of spatial, temporal and other “fixes” to (temporarily) transcend limitations to capital accumulation created by capitalist processes themselves (Duffy, 2015; Fletcher, 2011a; Fletcher & Neves, 2012; Hall, 2014).

Ecotourism development can be viewed as a particular form of disaster capitalism, pursuing among others an “environmental fix” (Castree, 2008) for the ecological damage wrought by conventional capitalist development (Fletcher, 2011a; Fletcher & Neves, 2012). As a quintessentially neoliberal practice emphasizing creation of private markets for commodification of natural resources for sale as tourism “products” (Duffy, 2015; Fletcher & Neves, 2012; West & Carrier, 2004), ecotourism promotion can indeed be understood to fulfill both dimensions of Klein’s definition.

In the long term, of course, the transformations precipitated by the Anthropocene will likely produce significant constraints upon tourism development as well as (human) life more broadly. As Huijbens and Gren assert, “Under the terms of the Anthropocene it seem unlikely that tourism can carry on in its modern register, that is, as a section of the Anthropos’s geo-force which potentially undermines its own safe operating space by today’s carbon-fuelled travelling” (2016, p. 5). Urry thus darkly predicts

the substantial breakdown of many mobility, energy and communication connections currently straddling the world. There would be a plummeting standard of living, a relocalization of mobility patterns, an increasing emphasis upon local warlords controlling recycled forms of mobility and weaponry, and relatively weak imperial or national forms of governance…Systems of repair would dissolve, with localized recycling of bikes, cars, trucks, computers and phone systems. Only the super-rich would travel far, and they would do so in the air, within armed helicopters or light aircraft, with very occasional tourist-type space trips to escape the hell on Earth in space, the new place of excess. (Urry, 2010, p. 207, in Gren & Huibens, 2014, p. 4)

In the short term, however, these transformations may offer particular opportunities for disaster capitalism via tourism expansion. In this way, Anthropocenic tourism may be understood as an important aspect of the process that Tsing (2015) describes as actors striving to forge livelihoods within the “capitalist ruins” of the Anthropocene more generally.

In what follows I explore this potential by focusing on a number of practices that can be seen to exemplify this dynamic: disaster tourism; extinction tourism; voluntourism; scientific tourism; development tourism; and, finally, self-consciously Anthropocene tourism itself. As previously noted, not all of these practices necessarily qualify as ecotourism per se, but rather exemplify the way in which the Anthropocenic changes are harnessed as the basis of touristic experience more broadly. The first two categories are most paradigmatic of the way Anthropocenic tourism may function as a form of disaster capitalism. The following three categories are less so, containing some elements that conform to this characterization and others that do not.

Selling the end of nature

Disaster tourism

“Disaster” or “dark” tourism entails the touring of post-disaster sites (Sion, 2014). These can be obviously human-induced disasters, such as the site of the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl (Chubb, 2016), or ostensibly “natural” disasters, like New Orleans post-Katrina (Klein, 2007). Of course, as numerous researchers have pointed out, such disasters can rarely be considered wholly “natural” when one takes into account the contribution of human processes and structures to precipitating them (Blaikie, Cannon, Davis, & Wisner, 2014). Yet in their framing as purely natural disasters, such events might be understood to form the basis of ecotours seeking to explore such spaces. A common rationale for such tours in the face of critique denouncing them as tasteless voyeurism is thus that their directly experiential character confers a lasting impact leading to positive change. As Chubb (2016) writes, “What’s more likely to make a profound impact; fire you up to care about big things? Someone telling you how terrible the Cambodian genocide was, or seeing the bones of murdered victims peeking through the soil for yourself?”

Disaster ecotourism of this sort takes a variety of forms. First is the mere viewing of the awe-inspiring power of the natural forces at work in such cases. The second is to raise awareness of their impacts on humans as well as other forms of life. The third is to raise awareness concerning the ways in which human processes, such as anthropogenic climate change, have contributed to such situations. In this way, disaster tours are increasingly linked explicitly to Anthropocenic processes to which the events and processes they feature are attributed.

A prime example of this dynamic concerns Hurricane Katrina, in response to which disaster tourism was promoted as a self-conscious form of disaster capitalism. As Gould and Lewis describe, “Hurricane Katrina (and hurricane Rita which followed) brought New Orleans’ tourism industry to a screeching halt… To fill the void and to reap economic opportunity, tour operators developed Katrina ‘disaster tours’” (Gould & Lewis, 2007, p. 177). Yet unlike in many disaster tourism sites, “human intervention in the natural environment is clearly implicated in the Katrina disaster causation narrative” (2007, p. 182). As the authors describe of one disaster tour company’s spiel,

The Gray Line narrative unambiguously places blame for the ecological disaster on human manipulation of the natural environment. It attributes responsibility for the flooding to the role of the oil and gas industry in cutting straight canals through the wetlands to facilitate the quickest possible river-gulf access, thus creating a vector through which the storm surge was directed into the city. (2007, p. 190)

The great irony in this case is that “New Orleans was not primarily an ecotourism destination prior to the ecological disaster. That is, while New Orleans’s economy was dependent on tourism, the ecotourism segment of that industry was minimal” (2007, p. 182). Paradoxically, therefore, the destruction wrought by a hurricane seen as the product of human action became the basis for a novel ecotourism industry exploring this “post-nature” landscape. In this way, via Anthropocenic disaster itself “a previously non-ecological tourism destination is transformed, in part, into an eco-disaster tourism destination” (2007, p. 183).

Extinction tourism

“Extinction” or “last chance” tourism entails visits to view or experience phenomena that are framed as in danger of imminent disappearance (Leahy, 2008). Common examples include visits to shrinking glaciers, as in the example from the introduction, or to witness endangered species such as polar bears. Visits to small island nations such as the Maldives in danger of submersion due to climate change-induced sea level rise fall into this category as well. In this way, as Leahy (2008) describes, “Tourism companies are now using climate change as a marketing tool”.

As with disaster tourism, extinction tourism can focus on one or more of the three different themes described in the previous section. The glacier tour described in the introduction, for instance, combines all three of these, simultaneously evidencing: the “natural” power of both glaciers and the global warming diminishing them; how this shrinking impacts the local people who have become dependent upon their glacier for their livelihood via tourism work; and how all of this should serve as a wake-up call concerning the planet-altering gravity of climate change more generally, inspiring reform in other areas of one’s life as well.

In extinction tourism, value is thus actually created by nature’s ostensible diminution, given that “there is a strong, perhaps perverse, desire in many people to go and see rare things” (Leahy, 2008). This irony of this dynamic is increased when one considers the role of the tourism industry itself in helping to fuel the climate change causing the diminution subsequently harnessed as a source of enhanced value. A more perfect circle of disaster capitalism would be difficult to imagine.

Voluntourism

Volunteer tourism or “voluntourism” occurs when a visitor pays for a tour in the course of which they contribute unpaid labor to a related social or environmental cause. This has been a rapidly growing segment of the tourism industry in recent years and a significant focus of research in its own right (see esp. Mostafanezhad, 2016; Vrasti, 2013; Wearing, 2001). Voluntourism can occur in different ways. In its most immersive form, one’s entire experience centers around the labor one contributes to the cause. Throughout Costa Rica, for instance, volunteers are recruited to assist in turtle conservation efforts, in the course of which they patrol beaches both to dissuade potential poachers and document turtle nesting sites (Gray & Campbell, 2007). In some sites volunteers work through the night for weeks on end in this way. In a less immersive form, volunteer work is balanced with purely pleasurable excursions to other places where no work takes place. Some Costa Rican turtle conservation organizations, for example, offer volunteers whitewater rafting, ziplining and other adventure tourism excursions on weekends. While in some project voluntourists’ labor is actually put to productive use, in many it is actually their money that is most desired as a key source of funding, in return for which they are made to feel useful by offered tasks that at least do not damage the work in question (Brightsmith, Stronza, & Holle, 2008).

Increasingly, voluntourism in many places is framed explicitly as an effort to address Anthropocenic processes and their impacts. Clemmens (2010) writes, “If climate change wasn't something on your radar as a voluntourist or voluntourism operator in the first decade of the new millennium, then it most assuredly will be in Decade 2.0”. He foretells that

climate change will generate unprecedented interest in the environment – particularly projects that can assist the native vegetation in flourishing and offsetting carbon emissions. Carbon offset programs will start to “employ'” voluntourists in such projects as:

• 1. Minimizing the impacts of their travel via the removal of invasive species (which allows the local flora, oftentimes responsible for absorbing more CO₂, to thrive),

• 2. Planting and caring for native species that mitigate flooding, erosion, and similar threats,

• 3. Planting and caring for native species that are both edible and drought resistant, and

• 4. Planting species that allow local residents to realize alternative income streams and reduce the likelihood of impacts from slash and burn agriculture, for example

In this way, voluntourists can work to mitigate the impacts caused by their own implication in the travel industry – in the process providing a key source of value for the organizations they support to keep selling an experience of helping to stave off the end of nature.

A subset of voluntourism is so-called “scientific tourism”. From a certain perspective, all scientific research involving travel can be seen as a form of tourism – even social science research concerning tourism itself (West, 2008). In its more paradigmatic form, however, scientific tourism involves travel to participate as a fee-paying, non-expert assistant in scientific research. This obviously overlaps somewhat with voluntourism, the key difference being that while some voluntourists may be scientific researchers many will not. Travel to participate in research concerning climate change and other Anthropogenic processes, such as documenting endangered species and threats posed to them, is a rapidly growing phenomenon, and hence a key means by which the end of nature is being incorporated into the Anthropocenic tourism industry.

Development tourism

“Development” tourism occurs when visitors tour sites of economic development projects, often those to which they have contributed funding (as in the ubiquitous donor visits arranged by development organizations) (Salazar, 2004). One increasingly popular form of such tourism entails university study abroad trips which seek to educate participants concerning development challenges and interventions intended to address them. When such tourism occurs in the context of projects intended to tackle climate change and its impacts, such as reforestation projects, drought resistant agricultural development, coastal adaptation or any other of a host of different foci, this can be included within the Anthropocene tourism complex.

Related to this is “developmentourism”, a neologism coined by Baptista (2017) to describe a dynamic in which economic development and tourism are so tightly conjoined that they can no longer be distinguished. As distinct from development tourism, then, in Baptista’s developmentourism tourism is in fact the main form of development, while the main focus of this tourism is the development impacts of the tourism itself. When this tourism is focused on communities using tourism revenue to develop climate change adaptation projects showcased during the tour, an Anthropocene disaster capitalism dynamic is clearly present. One project I have experienced in Costa Rica, for instance, offers a tour of a demonstration forest dedicated to carbon sequestration, wherein the financing for sequestration is not the offset credits normally sold to fund such a project but the fees charged to tourists coming to view it.

Anthropocene tourism

The latest development in the end-of-nature-tourism arsenal concerns the creation of tourism initiatives that self-consciously adopt the Anthropocene label to harness the sense of planetary emergency it embodies as the basis for the experience on offer. To date most such tourism takes place in museums and art galleries. A prime example is an exhibition called Gaia in the Anthropocene held at the Garage Rotterdam in the Netherlands, 2 February–31 March 2018. As the Rotterdam Tourism Information site describes:

In the last decades we became aware of the unmistakable influence humans exert on the conditions of the earth. Paradoxically, we also face growing unpredictability and uncontrollability of nature. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and extreme droughts appear to occur more and more often. Gaia in the Anthropocene stems from the idea that this fearsome development raises the desire for an approach that recognizes emotions, intuition, faith and myths that envision an ensouled nature. The exhibition is in line with the growing attention to nature-related myths in contemporary art and is a place where the visitor can withdraw from reality. ²

Similarly, the Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, offers an exhibit called “Omaha in the Anthropocene”, explaining:

The “anthropocene” is a proposed new geological era currently under consideration by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. It makes a bold claim that humans have become a geologically significant force in earth’s history. Objects are also important material sources of these historical changes. The Durham Museum is partnering with Creighton University’s History Department to produce an immersive, interdisciplinary experience for students in the fall semester of 2017. In conjunction with the curriculum of Dr. Adam Sundberg, Assistant Professor of History and Digital Humanities, museum staff will instruct and assist Creighton students with independent research related to The Durham Museum’s collection, distillation of that research into a lecture to be presented near the end of the fall semester, and an exhibition to be presented at The Durham in Spring 2018. ³

Robin et al. (2014) describe three further exhibitions invoking the Anthropocene. The first, titled Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands, [Willkommen im Anthropozän: Unsere Verantwortung für die Zukunft der Erde] was held at the Deutsches Museum in Munich from 2014 to 2016. It covered

1450 m² (ca. 15,600 square feet) and is structured in three parts. The first section provides a comprehensive introduction into the Anthropocene both as a geological hypothesis and new conceptual framework. The introduction includes a range of technological objects that highlight the eras of industrialization (from the late 1800s, building on Paul Crutzen’s narrative of the origins of the Anthropocene) and the Great Acceleration from the 1950s. The second part of the exhibition consists of six thematic areas that present selected phenomena of the Anthropocene, looking particularly at systemic connections, global and local interdependencies, and temporal dimensions… The third and final part of the exhibition discusses the future in the Anthropocene. It looks at past visions of the future, emphasizing their transformative potential while simultaneously highlighting their fragility and ambivalence. It then discusses possible scenarios of the future for people to consider in a more relaxing space; the final installation invites people to listen to possible scenarios and to plant their own possible scenario in an evolving field of paper daisies. (Robin et al., 2014, p. 212–13)

The second exhibition, a collection of “Anthropocene Posters sponsored by the Art Museum, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), placed the Anthropocene in a ‘museum without walls’ in the streets of Berlin in 2013” (Robin et al., 2014, p. 207).

Their third example, however, is not a museum or galley at all but rather an entire community. As the authors describe,

Pyramiden, a town established to mine coal well north of the Arctic Circle in the early 20th century, has been recently transformed as an attraction for climate change science and heritage tourism. Here the hybridized local landscape creates a snapshot of the Anthropocene, bringing together industrial coal-mining heritage buildings, polar tourism and science forged in the geopolitics of the changing Arctic environment. (2014, p. 207)

Newell, Robin, and Wehner (2016) go further to describe how a growing number of museums in a wide variety of places are developing exhibitions focusing on anthropogenic climate change and its effects and implications. In this way, selling the end of nature need not be limited to the fragments of “nature” seen to remain in rural spaces but may occur within the heart of industrial civilization itself.

Of course, not all museums and art galleries necessarily entail significant commodification, being publicly-funded or otherwise subsidized by sources beyond patrons’ fees. Hence, the extent to which such places perpetuate disaster capitalism per se demands more context-specific investigation. They can, however, still be considered elements of the more general tendency I have highlighted to harness the Anthropocene as the basis of expanded touristic experience.

Another example of self-consciously Anthropocenic tourism may comprise academic conferences wherein the Anthropocene and its implications are a focus of discussion (Swanson, Bubandt, & Tsing, 2015). As Swanson et al. observe, “In the past few years, conferences with “Anthropocene” in the title have increased even faster than CO₂ levels. Nearly every major meeting within the social sciences and humanities has had multiple Anthropocene-related panels” (2015, p.1 50). Such conferences themselves can of course rarely be considered a form of tourism in toto, in that most (although not all – see e.g. Honey, 2008) are organized (and subsidized) by non-profit organizations and participants attend primarily for professional rather than reactional reasons. Yet when attending these conferences participants do tend to spend money on hotels, restaurants and other hospitality infrastructure while often engaging in more direct touristic activities (either organized by the conference or independently) as well. Hence, aspects of such conferences may be seen to contribute to the Anthropocene disaster tourism complex explored herein.

Conclusions

Via strategies such as those previously outlined, the rise of Anthropocene tourism exemplifies capitalism’s astonishing capacity for self-renewal through creative destruction (Harvey, 2006). In this way, the practice of ecotourism can be sustained in a “post-nature” world by continuing to market social and environmental awareness and action even while shifting from the pursuit of nonhuman “nature” that previously grounded these activist aims. Such dynamics may thus allow the ostensive “limits to growth” (Meadows, Meadows, & Randers, 1972) posed by the environmental degradation wrought by industrial capitalism to be transformed into opportunities for further growth itself. Consequently, expanding Anthropocene tourism may provide a key “fix” for obstacles to accumulation via spatial-temporal displacement of accumulated capital into new avenues for investment and future return. Given that tourism is one of the largest capitalist industries in the world (UNWTO, 2018), this potential may not be insubstantial (Fletcher, 2011a). As I have previously described elsewhere, therefore, the tourism industry may continue to play a key role in sustaining not only itself but the capitalist system as a whole into the Anthropocene (Fletcher 2011a). While Amelia Moore predicts that “Anthropocene arguments about responsible travel practices and destination design are less likely to center on protecting pristine nature and more likely to revolve around devising ‘innovative’ means of managing socionatural relations in ways that are familiar and attractive to tourists and that confirm their understandings of global change” (2015c, p. 519), my analysis suggests that the remaining fragments of this ostensibly pristine nature may constitute – for a time at least – one of the principle “products” of Anthropocene tourism.

Of course there remain clear limits to this potential in the long run, which must eventually be reached and a new model developed for tourism management, as well as economic governance more generally, that does not depend on continual growth (Büscher and Fletcher, 2017; Hall, 2009, 2010; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2010, 2018). Hence, Higgins-Desbiolles asserts that achieving a truly “sustainable tourism necessitates a clear-eyed engagement with notions of limits that the current culture of consumerism and pro-growth ideology precludes” (2010, p. 125). Given that as an economic system capitalism as a whole is dependent on such growth (Fletcher, 2011a), particularly in its current neoliberal wherein growth constitutes the “one true and fundamental social policy” (Foucault, 2008, p. 144), this movement must thus of necessity be away from capitalism as a mode of production and form of exchange. Fortunately, as Robinson reminds us, tourism “need not be a capitalist activity” (Robinson, 2008, p. 133, emphasis in original). To realize its “post-capitalist” potential, tourism must, first and foremost, “move radically from a private and privatizing activity to one founded in and contributing to the common” (Büscher & Fletcher, 2017, p. 664). In this way, the practice may be harnessed as a force of progressive political, social and environmental justice, as Higgins-Desbiolles (2006, 2008, 2018) maintains. The success of tourism as such an instrument of post-capitalist politics, in sum, must be gauged by the extent to which it pursues: (1) forms of production not based on private appropriation of surplus value; and (2) forms of exchange not aimed at capital accumulation; that (3) fully internalize the environmental and social costs of production in a manner that does not promote commodification and (4) are grounded in common property regimes (Agrawal, 2003).

Some commenters remain hopeful that, notwithstanding the various dilemmas outlined in this article and elsewhere, embrace of the Anthropocene concept will assist in such a shift. Thus Gren and Huibens call for “an ethical Anthropocene a-tourism geo-gaze” that “ensures a subversive critical unmasking of the ideology of tourism” (2014, p. 12). Similarly, Hall contends that the Anthropocene must direct attention to issues “such as the structural imperatives of the capitalist economy that drive emissions, species exchange and biodiversity loss” (2016, p. 66). This is line with overarching aspirations that a “good” Anthropocene may inspire humans to take seriously the impacts of their actions upon earth systems and hence take responsibility for this reality by becoming conscientious planetary stewards (Lorimer, 2015; Ogden et al., 2013).

Meanwhile, however, the mainstream tourism industry appears to remain committed to a path of incessant growth, with the UN World Tourism Organization (2018) maintaining its consistent yearly prediction that international arrivals will expand continually to reach 1.8 billion by 2030. At the same time, however, concerns about tourism “overcrowding” in many areas as a result of such promotion has provoked increasingly confrontational protest over the last several years. Industry insiders have responded by labeling this backlash “tourism-phobia” and asserting that “growth is not the enemy; it is how we manage it”. ⁴ Hence, they are likely to continue to embrace Anthropocene tourism and other forms of disaster capitalism as a “fix” to stave off economic and environmental crises for as long as they are able.

This strategy is understandable. To question growth as the basis for tourism development would be to question not only the industry’s particular raison d’etre but also its function as a key pillar of the capitalist political economy more generally. This would be a tall order for organizations central to the industry’s development itself. Short of this, as in many other realms (Amore, Hall, & Jenkins, 2017), redirection to “post-political” (Swyngedouw, 2010) discussion of the possibilities of preserving forms of “sustainable” or “green” growth via mere technical adjustment rather than fundamental transformation is a logical and pragmatic choice (see e.g. UNEP, 2011). Whether this can succeed, however, remains a fundamental question for critical scholarship concerning our prospects for developing a truly sustainable tourism.

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Notes on contributors

Robert Fletcher

Robert Fletcher is Associate Professor in the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. His research interests include conservation, development, tourism, climate change, globalization and resistance and social movements. He is the author of Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism (Duke University, 2014) and co-editor of Nature^TM Inc.: Environmental Conservation in the Neoliberal Age (University of Arizona, 2014).

Notes

1 While employing the same term, Haraway and Moore conceptualize it in quite different ways, the nuancess of which are beyond the scope of this article (see Haraway, 2016 and Moore, 2015 for extended discussions). In this analysis I follow Jason Moore’s (2015) approach in understanding the Anthropocene as an expression of the consequences of capitalist production in particular.

2 https://en.rotterdam.info/agenda/gaia-in-the-anthropocene/; accessed 6/12/2017.

3 https://durhammuseum.org/event/omaha-in-the-anthropocene-a-learning-exploration-with-creighton-university-2/?instance_id =4179; accessed 6/12/2017.

4 http://london.wtm.com/en/events/wtm-ministerial-programme/Ministers-Summit/; accessed 25/9/2017.