Degrowth as a strategy for adjusting to the adverse impacts of climate change in a nature-based destination

This chapter considers the opportunities for nature-based destinations facing a significant climate change driven decline in key ecosystems to adopt ideas that have emerged from the degrowth literature. Strategies that have been suggested in the literature are outlined and the difficulty of implementing degrowth strategies in a global economic system that continues to follow the neoliberal linear economic production model is discussed. A key finding of the chapter is that the major inhibitor to achieving degrowth objectives in a tourism context is the absence of a suitable economic model or models that support the transition from the current global production system to a new production system able to support degrowth principles. However, the chapter does suggest that at the destination level there is scope to adopt limited degrowth strategies and proposes a framework that can assist the tourism industry respond to changing tourism demand as key ecosystems decline.