Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

Abstract

Tourism studies have a tradition of seeking alternative pathways to economic development that minimise negative externalities for destinations. However, despite discourses that focus on sustainability and conservation tourism's contribution to global environmental change have continued to increase. Instead, the contribution of tourism to sustainable development should be understood in the context of degrowth processes that offer an alternative discourse to the economism paradigm that reifies economic growth in terms of GDP. A paradigm supported by institutions such as the UNWTO. A steady state understanding of sustainability is postulated that stresses both efficiency and sufficiency in terms of the natural capital and ecological resources on which economic throughput is based. Steady state tourism is therefore defined as a tourism system that encourages qualitative development but not aggregate quantitative growth that unsustainably reduces natural capital.

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