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Anna Pollock, Founder, Conscious Travel
Eastbourne, July 12th, 2015
Flourishing Beyond Growth
Background
Strategist, thinker, “sense maker”Social Entrepreneurwww.tipse.org
Conscious.Travel Tourism Changemakers Forum
What is “Conscious” Travel about?
Wake Up to the nature of changeSustainable Tourism Certification Alliance Africa
http://www.slideshare.net/AnnaP/beyond-csr-sustainability
Victoria Tourism industry Council
http://www.slideshare.net/AnnaP/vtic5-game-changing-long
1. Mass tourism is based on a production-consumption model hooked on growth2. Not paying full cost (externalities); nor protecting the resource on which it is based
(insufficient de-coupling)3. High leakage (where all inclusive resorts are concerned, only 5% of every $ spent
stays in host community); wealth increasingly concentrated 4. Heavy resource users (land, water) and waste producers (emissions, trash)5. Diminishing returns – “Cheap Travel” homogenization, commodification, 6. Limited local ownership – property and development rights closely aligned with
sources of capital 7. Poor labour-relations record; low pay; seasonal, temporary work, poor conditions8. Boom & bust – resilience?9. Social cost: trafficking, displacement, child abuse, disempowerment, 10. Market splitting (bifurcating!): Price-Experience
Wake Up and Own Up – Radical Re-think Needed
Wake Up
Grow Up
Step Up
How do we Manage The Tourism Tsunami?
Targets or forecasts?
Desirable or Inevitable Growth?
The UNWTO Position
The core of our mandate as a UN-specialized agency is to promote sustainable tourism, but you can’t promote sustainability if you don’t promote tourism, so that’s why we said competition and growth on one hand and sustainability on the other. We stand for a belief that the growth of this industry on one hand and the preservation, protection, responsibility and sustainability on the other hand are not a zero-sum game. We believe that we can continue to grow, we have to embrace growth and never be afraid of it. UNWTO
Source: UNWTO Interview reported in SKIFT
Assessing tourism’s global impact 1990-2010Stefan Gossling and Paul PetersJournal of Sustainable Tourism, 2015Vol23, No 5, 639-659
The Conscious Travel Position
Success and Growth need to be re-defined from volume and more to greater positive net impact (quality, yield) and better for more.
Places are not real estate, landscapes and habitats to be exploited but sacred places in which all – and especially the inhabitants - must be enabled to flourish.
Tourism can play a major role in helping humanity restore and repair its relationship to Nature provided that its hosts change the way they perceive their world and act in it. A major mindset shift is imperative.
Conscious Travel Approach
1. Business as usual is impossible and unsustainable2. We must shift our focus from symptoms to root cause –
i.e., the way we think & perceive3. We must learn to think like nature does and understand
how systems work 4. Contribute to the shift from an Extractive to a Regenerative
Economy5. Change Our Purpose – from bigger to better; from more to
flourishing6. Empower People in Communities – change from bottom up
Perspective: Six Assumptions
Business As Usual Not Sustainable
“Population growth, exploitation of natural resources, climate change and other factors are putting the world on a development trajectory that is not sustainable…
If we fail to alter our patterns of production and consumption, things will begin to go badly wrong”
Sustainable Economy, Renewing Capitalism, Conscious Capitalism, Corporation 2020, Sustainable Capitalism, Responsible Capitalism, Clean Capitalism, The Responsible Economy, Capitalism as if the Planet Matters, Creative Capitalism, Compassionate Capitalism, Just Capitalism, Regenerative Capitalism Spiritual Capital, Tomorrow’s Company, Breakthrough Capitalism, Sir Richard Branson’s B Team and WEFs New Social Contract.
CAPITALISM Re-thinking itself
INTRINSIC Systemic Flaws
• Systemic breakdowns are breakdowns that occur in an entire system, as opposed to breakdowns in individual parts and components. Systemic risks are characterised by: • Modest tipping points combining indirectly to
produce large failures• Risk sharing or contagion, as one loss triggers
the chain of others• Hysteresis or systems being unable to recover
after a shock.
EMERGING: Everything and everyone is connected
Systemic Change
The real problem is how we view or see things
Where are we on these curves?
Dr. Butler’s TALC Model
Is anything sustainable for ever?
What do we know for certain about the future?It hasn’t happened yet!
What do we know for certain about the present?
It’s the sum total of past imagination, aspirations, actions and interactions
Imaginings in 1950
Imaginings in 1950
What’s missing from those images?
Isn’t it time to imagine something different?
It IS time to restore our relationship with Nature
But that means asking harder, deeper questions
Who are we?
Why are we here?
How did we get here?
What does it mean to be human?
“We have one generation in which to shift human consciousness”
Jeremy Rifkin
What else does this pattern represent?
“It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble now because we do not have a good story. We’re in between stories. The old story, the account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story” Thomas Berry
Homo Sapiens
“I think therefore I am”
Childhood Homo economicus
“I shop therefore I am”
Adolescence
“I sustain life therefore I can BE”
Adulthood
Homo regenesis*
* Source: Josh MacLennan, Trimtab
Our epistemological error!
• Problem, object orientation• “An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing.”
• Misuse of language• Sustainable what?
Our epistemological error!
• Myth of the steady / stable state• “Life is constantly evolving, developing, defying entropy”
• Overshoot will continue (stuff accumulates!)
Our epistemological error!
• We’re heading in the wrong direction• We’re not seeing the whole; we’re not seeing ourselves as part of Nature
• Systemic breakdowns are breakdowns that occur in an entire system, as opposed to breakdowns in individual parts and components. Systemic risks are characterised by: • Modest tipping points combining indirectly
to produce large failures• Risk sharing or contagion, as one loss
triggers the chain of others• Hysteresis or systems being unable to
recover after a shock.
EMERGING: Everything and everyone is connected
Systemic Change
Assumptions Underpinning an Extractive Economy• Humans are separate, superior & have dominion over other life forms• The planet and business operate like machines that can be engineered• Business is the best form for creating wealth; Money is the sole measure of success
that matters. • Private ownership of resources is essential to the operation of a free market
economy• A company’s fiduciary responsibility is to maximize returns to their shareholders• A free market best determines how capital and resources (input) are allocated to
create wealth (from goods and services)• Financial capital matters more than natural, social, intellectual, spiritual capital • The purpose of capital is to manufacture further financial wealth that “trickles
down” to benefit all!• The combined results of business activity (transactions) in a community is best
measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
What’s an Economy For?
You don’t start with the corporation and ask how to redesign it.You start with life, with human life of the planet and ask…How do we generate the conditions for life’s flourishing?Marjorie Kelly
The only valid purpose of an economy is to serve life. To align the human economy with this purpose, we must learn to live as nature lives, organises as nature organises, and learn as nature learns, guided by a reality-based, life centred, intellectually sound economics. David Korten
So what is life?
• Life is a system that regenerates itself from within• It is in a constant state of becoming, evolving• Life emerges from the relationships of its parts• Life is matter that chooses
The Visitor Economy is a system embedded in a larger living system
• With hosts (human beings) • Encountering and serving • Guests (other human beings)• In a community of other human beings
and life forms• That takes place in a unique space• Embedded in a larger ecosystem
How do you change a system?
Let’s Change Our Purpose:to ensure all Life Flourishes
INSPIRATION
Human Health
Ecosystem Health
•Vitality, vigor, energy •Diversity, complexity•Balance •Resilience•Adaptable & Evolving
Video link
Society
Destination
Enterprise
Individual
1. Business as usual is impossible and unsustainable2. We must shift our focus from symptoms to root causes3. We need to understand how systems work – especially
living systems to build a Regenerative Economy4. Change Our Purpose – from bigger to better; from more to
flourishing5. Empower Place-based Communities to be stewards in their
“places”
Perspective: Six Assumptions
How do make the transition?
From here
to here
5 Ps of the Industrial Production-Consumption Model
Conscious Travel Principles
So What’s It Going To Take?
• Just knowing won’t get us very far. • We have to transform this knowledge
into a deep passion to change course.• But passion does not come from the
head. It is a product of the heart. And the heart is not aroused by bare facts alone. • It needs stories that weaves those facts
into a moving and meaningful narrative.
Source: Richard Schiffman
What’s It Going To Take?
We need a powerful new story that: • Shows we are part of nature and not
separate from it.• Properly situates humans in the world –
neither above it by virtue of our superior intellect, nor dwarfed by the universe into cosmic insignificance.• That we are equal partners with all
that exists, co-creators with trees and galaxies and microbes in a materially and spiritually evolving universeSource: Richard Schiffman
5 Ps of the Industrial Production-Consumption Model
Conscious Travel Principles
Principles as Stepping Stones
We will each play different roles
Together we can create a visitor economy that’s
BetterAnd
Better for all!Thank You!
[email protected]: www.tipse.org
