While in Spain, Nick Steiner, the water restorationist, and I were involved in discussions with folks from the Spanish hospitality sector about restoring the water cycles and bringing back the rains there. It began to dawn on us that eco-tourism could play a role in the regenerative water movement. Anna Pollock, who is from the UK, heard of our discussions, and contacted me. She has been a leader in the regenerative tourism movement and in conscious travel. The 2022 Journey Women award was given to her for her work in regenerative tourism. She has been guiding the hospitality sector to help the regenerative farming sector through their purchasing power of food, through their ability to educate guests about regeneration and organic products, and through helping farms develop home-stay programs.
Here is an abridged version of my podcast interview with Anna Pollock [edited for clarity and brevity]
Alpha : How did you get into the tourism industry?
Anna : I've been at it a long time. I started in tourism 50 years ago. I had emigrated to Canada and I happened to arrive in British Columbia at the very moment that the government there was starting to think about whether they could do something with this thing called tourism. Their economy up until that point was entirely resource-based, and they had no chance of doing a lot in manufacturing because of their location at the time. I happened to arrive after having spent a temporary job in England with the research department of Visit England. I had tourism on my resume, and the rest is history. I essentially had an opportunity to start with a very young visitor economy, with very little government involvement at that point, and develop that over a period of about 25 years, before I left Canada to come back to the UK. I’ve been working as a strategist and as a consultant, a bit of a futurist, a bit of a thinker. I’ve always liked to be ahead of the curve, and I’ve been doing that in various places.
I do a lot of international speaking, trying to encourage people to think differently, look forward to see what's happening, and adjust what they're doing accordingly. That has kept me busy for that amount of time. So that’s my background.
Alpha: How did your interest in sustainability and regenerative ecology begin?
Anna: The sustainability journey started probably in the late '80s because I was involved with a consulting firm that was looking at land use planning. It was the time when ecotourism was being considered. A river rafting company in British Columbia came to me and said they were fighting a major mining proposal on one of the most beautiful rivers in British Columbia. They wanted to put tourism on that river to generate jobs and livelihoods without damaging the environment or the river. They asked if I could help them make a case.
That was my first foray into trying to construct an argument as to why tourism in the future might be another land use that would bring benefits without necessarily causing the damage that mining was causing. That was a long time ago now, and it did get protected. It got me really interested in ecotourism, and then we did some other sustainable planning-type projects.
Like many people, I was really affected by An Inconvenient Truth. That really got me looking very seriously at what was happening in the environment. I started getting serious about it, around 2000. I did a sustainability strategy in 2008 for British Columbia.
Alpha: Could you explain the difference between sustainable travel and regenerative tourism?
Anna: That's a challenging one. It all depends on how these terms are understood or interpreted because to sustain simply means to carry on, endure, or maintain. If the intent is to sustain a healthy planet with healthy people and biodiversity, then there wouldn't really be any difference between that and the concept of regeneration. However, over the past 20, 30, or even 40 years, the meaning of sustainability has remained very vague. It's not necessarily defined what anyone is trying to sustain. Or what I see happening is that the underlying principle behind it is sustaining the status quo, sustaining the current economic model. It aims to minimize damage, of course, mitigate and reduce emissions, cut back on water use, waste, etc., all of these good things, but it doesn't really challenge the system itself.
That’s where I believe regeneration is fundamentally different because it’s based on a completely different understanding of how the world works. The current economic model that we're all caught up in, call it what you want, is based on a set of assumptions about us living in a machine-like world that we can divide into pieces and understand by reducing it to components.
The reality is not that case at all. As you would understand, being involved with rivers, we are living systems as human beings. We inhabit a living system, which is the planet. It is constantly adjusting to the forces around it and within it. When you see that and have that way of perceiving, it changes the way you act and the values you have.
The fundamental difference between the two is that one is based on a particular way of looking at the world. They call it a paradigm that sees the world as a machine—objects to be identified, analyzed, defined, and then acted upon—versus seeing the world we live in as a living system, as we are a living system, and acting according to a different set of rules, as it were. That’s the real difference between regeneration and sustainability.
So when I see many people tacking on the word regeneration and talking about community engagement or nature-based solutions while continuing the fundamental paradigm and the same business model, which is usually growth-oriented—more people, more travel, more destinations—I know it's not the real thing. I hope that kind of explains it.
Alpha: Could you tell me a little bit about the evolution of regenerative tourism history and what paradigm shifts might have occurred in its evolution?
Anna: The most important thing to realize is that the application of regenerative thinking, which has been present in the Western world, has been around since probably the last war, certainly the 50s and 60s.
Regeneration in the Western world is still quite young, but it's not a new concept. If you look at a large population of the earth, indigenous peoples and people of different spiritual traditions understand regenerative thinking. They do it naturally; it’s in their DNA. It’s new in the Western world. When looking at the application of that thinking in the tourism domain, it's really very young, very new. I started studying it around 2010. Before that, I didn't feel confident enough to start writing about how that might have been applied to tourism for another nine years. I wrote a blog post titled Regeneration: The Maturation of Sustainability, suggesting it was a step forward. I'm not saying I created regenerative tourism; I simply applied the thinking or tried to apply the thinking to tourism. That was only six years ago. Regenerative thinking is now moving into many domains—obviously agriculture, regenerative economics—and tourism is responding to that. People in tourism are thinking, "We need to understand this, apply it, or use the term because it’s trendy." I wouldn't say it has evolved; I would say it has spread, and in that process, it has sometimes been misrepresented and sometimes even diluted.
Alpha: I saw you had an article advocating the importance of soil to the tourism industry. Can you say a little bit about the article and the impact it may have had?
Anna: My interest in soil comes from a, I am a gardener and b, the fact that food is a major part of hospitality. I'm focusing my work very much now on the hospitality component of tourism. There are several reasons for that. One is that hospitality providers are very much rooted in places, and we need to focus more and more on applications in specific places. There’s no generic regenerative solution, and it happens to be that this sector is rooted in place.
Secondly, it's involved in the activity of caring for visitors and providing food. The moment you start talking about food, you begin to explore where it comes from, how nutritious it is, and what determines that. This leads to the quality of agricultural practices and brings us into regenerative agriculture. I feel very strongly that the hospitality sector has a role in helping farmers transition from industrial farming practices into regenerative ones, which ultimately comes back to the health of the soil.
Essentially, I'm saying to the tourism industry, not only do you need to reduce your carbon emissions if you're focusing on that aspect, but you are also part of a bigger system in your locality. You must provide nutritious food to your guests, ideally by procuring it locally, and therefore you can develop relationships with farmers and perhaps help them make that transition more quickly. You could say the same thing about water, which we will discuss shortly. This is an important part of the whole topic. What I'm trying to do is help hospitality providers break out of their bubble, understand the bigger system they are part of, and figure out what they can do. I'm really interested in helping people understand too that tourism isn't so much an industry that operates with value chains where we're all linked in a very mechanical way; rather we are part of a living system in a place.
We're part of a network, in a particular place. If we want to be healthy as a business, if we want to succeed, we need to make sure that the environment, in the biggest sense of the word, is also healthy. Therefore, we can't ignore these issues around the quality of the landscape, the quality of the food, the environment, the air, and the water. We have to start getting involved in those things too. So regenerative thinking takes a very holistic approach. It’s that change of mindset that really is at the core of all of this. Additionally, we need to shift away from simply saying, "Okay, I'm here, this beautiful scenery, we're all right by the beach, we're getting lots of visitors coming in every year, and I'm getting more and more money." That's an extractive mentality.
Now, a regenerative approach will be to say, "Well, you're part of a living system. You perhaps would benefit more yourself as a business, but the community would also benefit if you were to ask, how can I contribute to the flourishing of this community and understand what's going on here?" That’s one of the reasons I got really interested in what you were doing, because it seemed that obviously water is a significant issue everywhere, but particularly in Spain. Tourism is a major industry in Spain, and a lot of your providers in the hospitality sector are now finding that the water cannot always be relied upon to be there in the quantity they’re used to providing to their guests. So, it’s natural that they should start to be thinking more about these issues than they have in the past.
Alpha: What shifts in soil awareness do you see in the hospitality sector?
Anna: The shift is definitely beginning to take place in parts of the world now. I certainly wouldn't take any credit for that because it has been a hard slog getting this topic, if you like, even onto the agenda.
Alpha: What is agritourism?
Anna: Basically, we love to put labels on tourism for different kinds of experiences, but it's where visitors or tourists go to a farm to have a farm experience. Whether it’s to be closer to the animals or to see how the food is made or how different products, like cheeses or wines, come from that location. So, it’s often a combination of the production and the consumption side of it.
Agritourism providers are usually small holdings, farms, and food producers attracting visitors to come and see them. It’s growing considerably. I mean, it's very big in places like Italy, because it’s been happening for a long time. But it’s happening now all over the world. It shows the importance of hospitality in terms of making ordinary people much more aware of these environmental issues. The hospitality community can also play a role in increasing people’s awareness and maybe understanding how they have to change their own behavior or become more selective about what they buy and who they buy it from, or spending more time outside, etc. All of these different spin-off effects come from being exposed to people who are starting to really care for the land or soil.
Alpha: There are techniques that have helped raise awareness around soil and regenerative farms—are any of these techniques helpful to bring regenerative water into awareness? Most people in hospitality probably don't know about this whole concept of regenerative water. How can we bring this into the conversation?
Anna: Well, the term regenerative water might be difficult for some people because they might ask, "What does that mean?" But when you're talking about whether this environment is healthy and flourishing, or whether it is stable or very vulnerable, I think there is a huge rapid increase in the last two or three years of some climatic hazards that have become more frequent. People are becoming aware of the need to pay much more attention. To me, it's about beginning to understand and having the opportunity to show visitors that we are part of a living planet. We need to pay attention to how the climate is adjusting to our behavior.
It's a bit of a challenging concept for the tourism industry because we fly people places. However, we also have access as hotels, restaurants, chefs, and so on to many people whom we can influence if we desire to help them better understand what some of these issues are.
Alpha: Right. I would define regenerative water as restoring the water cycles to the way they have been flowing naturally. This includes replenishing groundwater so streams can flow, restoring rivers so that they're more natural and the water can overflow the banks. An aspect that a lot of people don't know about yet is that restoring the land can restore the rain. Particularly in Spain and Portugal, where they are losing rain in the warmer southern areas and eastern coastal regions, and where they grow much of the food. This impacts the whole food system. It also impacts the tourism industry because the water has to be turned off for hotels and hostels from time to time.
Anna: Right. That’s one of the other reasons I was particularly interested in your project. I have read about the scientist, Millan Millan, how he had a hard time convincing the world that this water cycle was a major component of many climatic systems. We tend to focus just on carbon and emissions. Again, that’s our way of thinking; we tend to put things in boxes. So, we talk about the carbon cycle. It's only recently that people have begun to understand that trees make rain and that there’s a water cycle involved.
Especially in Spain, where there has been significant deforestation or land use changes. This can now be attributed to the increase in drought. The tourism industry, paradoxically, uses far more water than the locals do. This makes that industry particularly sensitive to this topic.
I feel there’s an opportunity here for the hotel sector, which is very dependent on having an ample supply of fresh water, to start to educate itself about what actions can be taken in the communities in which they are located to help reverse that trend. Forestation, planting trees for shelter or shade, either around their own buildings or in the community generally, is an action taken out of self-interest, as well as trying to help the community and the planet. We have a network in any community, so whichever area you are in, it’s about using that network to spread this word and get more people involved. The light is beginning to go on in many communities that everyone has an immediate responsibility to be involved in doing something. Hotels, chefs, and restaurants probably have more reason to get involved than others.
Alpha: Yes, some ways they can engage include printing materials that highlight some of these aspects of regenerative water that people don't know about. In their restaurants, they could say, "We’re getting water from this kind of source," or "We’ve been working to replenish groundwater, and this is how we’re restoring the water cycles in this area." The water you’re drinking in the restaurant is a result of this process, or they’re sourcing it from these regenerative farms where the soil can absorb more rain.
Anna: All of these gentle educational messages can be passed on. At the same time, hotels can get involved in local reforestation projects, for example. Many visitors now will say they want shade; they want to enjoy the landscape, but you're not going to enjoy it if you can't breathe. If it’s too hot, you’ll be indoors with the air conditioning running. In the long run, it just pays to get involved in these things, rather than sitting on the sidelines and saying, "That’s not my business." It is your business. You're in the business of welcoming guests and ensuring they have a happy and healthy time. If you do that, your business will prosper. If you do not, chances are in a few years’ time, you won’t turn the tap on and get what you want.
Alpha: Yes, I saw in Sicily this year that they were turning tourists away because they had a water shortage.
Anna: All of these things are becoming apparent now in these odd incidences. Just as we previously had the odd wild forest fire in various places, now we’re getting them every year in different parts of the world, sometimes more than once. They’re not isolated incidents anymore. In certain places like Florida, they have far too much of it. That’s just another side of the same coin. We do have enormous weather hazards, and these are going to disrupt some of the normal patterns of tourism. Just as people will avoid places where there’s an epidemic, they won’t go to places where they find out there’s no water.
Alpha: Yes, hotels sometimes face both issues: during the dry season, there’s not enough water, and the taps get turned off, while in the wet season, they sometimes face flooding. Solving the flooding problem by planting more vegetation and improving soil to absorb the rain can actually help infiltrate and increase groundwater, which can then be useful.
Anna: It’s ironic because when we talk about the economic impacts of tourism, I argue that instead of focusing on the volume of visitors and the amount of spending they generate, we should focus on the net benefit that percolates through the community—much like water—so that more people at the ground level actually benefit from that flow coming in.
The models around water flow and the models around money flow are not that dissimilar. It’s a powerful metaphor. When you explain that when you have a forest, the water droplets bounce off each leaf, which slows the process down. The leaves, the humus on the forest floor, and the ground cover also slow the rate at which water goes into the soil. The amount of humus in the soil again slows it down and spreads it out. The same concept could apply to the economic impact of incoming tourist dollars. How do we ensure that also percolates throughout the community?
Alpha: That’s a good way of putting it. There is an analogy here with the small water cycle, you want to increase that flow. There’s a kind of small water cycle of money, right? If the hotel is funneling or the agritourism is funneling money to other regenerative endeavors, that flows into that sphere. So that money flows not just that one time around; it can keep flowing in that regenerative sector, as opposed to flowing into more of the extractive sector.
Anna: Exactly. And that's the main principle of regeneration: to create added benefit, to be generative. That's why it's called regenerative; it's to generate versus extract. Same with your water cycle; you're trying to generate more water where you need it and not keep extracting it or hoarding it or stockpiling it.
Alpha: There is the sustainable sector which is about recycling and reuse, and the regenerative sector which is regenerating the soil and regenerating the small water cycle. We want to shift the amount of money from the extractive sector into the sustainability and regenerative sectors. The more we can shift that money, the more those sectors will take off.
Anna: That’s what we're trying to do right now. It’s about getting people to think in terms of these different models. They need to be sensitive to the fact that they're living in a living system. You can't keep taking things out of a living system without getting into trouble because you run out of resources, and you can't keep putting poisons into a system without also getting into trouble.
It's about living in harmony and balance with the natural world. To do that, you have to become much more aware than we've had to of where our food comes from, what its quality is, what the conditions under which it was produced are, how it is being processed, what’s being added to it, and where the waste is going. All of those different issues require us to become much more ecologically literate than we've ever had to in the past.
Alpha: I think this whole agritourism industry also has a chance to educate people about the small water cycle aspect of regenerative water. When they come to their farms, they can show them about the soil and the various agroforestry techniques or permaculture techniques, but there's also a chance to actually talk to them about how the evapotranspiration adds to the water vapor blowing from the ocean to create rain. If we can educate a lot of these agritourism farms about this, maybe that's the way for this knowledge to also spread to their visitors.
Anna: I think it's certainly a major channel that could be used. This water topic hasn't received the attention that climate change has had in terms of carbon, but it's all related. It's not just about the water cycle; it's about understanding natural cycles in total, that everything is interconnected and interrelated. There are these cycles going on. Bringing about that awareness and sensitivity is key.
The one thing you can't do when you have visitors coming to a place is give heavy-duty lectures; they don't respond well to that. But there are many subtle ways in which these messages can be translated. If anyone's doing regenerative farming, they might not be as aware as a scientist, but they are certainly fully aware of managing and looking after their water supply. I suggest it would be a good topic. The hospitality sector is about sitting around a table eating food, which is one of the most relaxed environments in which to have these kinds of conversations almost spontaneously.
The hospitality sector literally exists to bring people together to have those conversations. Hotels in your area could say to the local people, "We're going to have an evening just looking at our water situation. What could we be doing about this together?" Farmers, hoteliers, people who work in an office or live in a place, anyone using water could start conversing, convening, and having these difficult conversations in a setting that breaks down barriers. It doesn't become a shouting match.
Alpha: So hotels themselves can be the conveners of these gatherings or awareness.
Anna: Yes.
Alpha: I think in the regenerative context, we don't normally think of hotels as initiating this, but they very well could be helping to initiate some of this awareness.
Anna: That’s why I contacted you. I believe that completely. If they were shown how and why, there are many hoteliers already doing great things individually, but in a community, what I'm suggesting is that my message to the hospitality sector particularly is these are ways you could be making your contribution. Everyone is being asked now to step up and not just wait for someone else to solve the problem. You’re already in the business of caring and providing hospitality. You already connect people and convene meetings.
This should come quite naturally to you. Food and water are essential to your business; you won't be successful unless you can provide that well to your guests. It’s in your interest to protect this source.
Alpha: What are the ways to get this message out to the ecotourism industry or the hospitality sector?
Anna: I don't know what kind of organization you have, but you start by doing a project in Spain and test it, working with a community there or several. Always start small and then it gets bigger. The same goes for the landscape restoration arena. That area started off small and now it's picking up enormously. People want to understand how to restore a landscape.
I would fit what you're doing in that context as well. If you get too specific and focus just on water, it will be less well received. How do we help this place flourish? You're probably familiar with the work of ecosystem restoration. In Spain, there's an area called AlVelAl, which was overgrazed and very drought-stricken. Over about ten years, they’ve gradually restored vast areas, improving water and achieving much greater diversity of crops and yields.
As a result, an area that was depopulating is now seeing people moving back in to restore the villages that were left empty. Even tour companies are bringing people in to see it. But it started small and must go from there. The environment is much more sympathetic to these initiatives now than it was five years ago. I think there are ways to start working with individuals who have a passion in an area and say, "Let's get this conversation going."
You're not going to solve the problem immediately; it takes time, but it's better than waiting for someone else to come from Madrid with a checklist or a policy document.
Alpha: Commonland is involved in the AlVelAl project. They recognize that land restoration has to happen at a large scale. They're saying at 100,000 hectares. At that scale you have an impact on the rain too.
So basically, you're restoring the land to restore the rain. Commonland has a facilitation process they use to bring together multiple stakeholders: the local government, local investors, local business, local environmentalists, farmers, and residents. They connect these groups.
So they're trying to do facilitate a collaborative effort instead of having one group fighting another. It's more like, let's connect first - we all want better land for the future for our kids. As they connect around that, they can say, "Hey, let's work together." Over a 20-year period, they can gradually shift from the extractive sector to the regenerative sector. Together the stakeholders make a plan that doesn’t demonize people in the extractive industry, but creates a strategic plan to help them transition.
Anna: Yeah, that's right. I understand what you're saying about scale. You do need projects at a large scale, but even those large-scale projects started small. When you look at how they began, there were literally three or four younger individuals inheriting farms who were aware of different agricultural techniques. They had to persuade some very stubborn farmers who owned the land, their fathers, for example. I've seen fascinating videos that go back about 10 years. At some point, they either invited Commonland in, or Commonland saw the opportunity, but it usually starts with someone. The beautiful thing now is we have that story and many others of ecosystem restoration at scale. There are also a lot more stories of individual farmers doing things, which are becoming quite newsworthy and catching on. It doesn't always have to be big because that is the usual excuse: "I can't do anything because it's just the two or three of us." I just don't buy that anymore.
If you have the skills to pull all those people together, great. But usually, something has to start before that anyway.
Alpha: Yeah, I agree. It's like starting with your area or your land and working on regenerating that. Then you'll gradually find people in your region who are also working. From there, you can grow a network. I think the hotels and the tourism industry can also invest in this facilitation and community building to grow that network throughout the whole region. I believe that injection of investment money could help it move faster along that whole facilitation process.
Anna: Oh, I agree. It’s a very exciting time to be around because all these different initiatives are starting to feed into each other and speed everything up.
It's a sort of catalytic response, actually. I happen to be working with a landowner in Scotland who is developing his lodge for more guests. At the same time, he's sitting on a fair chunk of land that he wants to restore. A lot of it is quite wild right now, but he will be shaping his strategy around the potential for biodiversity, peatland restoration credits, woodland credits, and all the rest of it. He now sees all that as an integral whole, not just a series of separate activities. They will start benefiting each other.
The visitors will want to see if the biosphere is improving, if there are more species of animals to observe, in addition to wanting fresh nutritious food from the new regenerative farmers in the valley that wasn't there before.
Alpha: Costa Rica is an interesting example in Central America. In the 70s and 80s, they decided they wanted an eco-tourism model. They saved a lot more of the forest and vegetation than the surrounding countries in Central America.
Anna: Yes, that was the decision of a few people who said, "As a policy, we will take care of this forest." It's not a perfect country, but they really made a significant commitment. They are very aware of the quality of the rainforest they're living in and the quality of the biosphere. They have every intention of protecting it. I think regeneration and what nature does is build the capability of all its parts to make their own contributions. Every cell in your body is regenerating right now, contributing to your sitting there—hopefully healthily—but you know what I mean.
To me, that kind of thinking is what we need to spread.
The other point I want to make about this, whether it’s water, soil, diversity, wildlife, or anything else, is that wherever we can show nature doing what it does best—getting healthy when we either get out of the way or help it—that's why I love ecosystem restoration projects. They give us healthier soil, better water quality, and more. But the one thing people need most right now is hope. Hope comes from seeing that change can happen.
When you can see that change happens, you become hopeful, and then you're in a position to say, "Okay, I want to get involved in playing my part in that positive change because I can see I can do something." To me, that's the most important reason I do what I do. When I see people realizing they can be effective, we can make a change.
Alpha: There’s an interesting project called Zero Food Print by Anthony Myint, where restaurants allow customers to offer an optional 1% extra, and that money is used for regenerative farm grants. It started in California and Colorado and has now expanded to East Asia.
Anna: Yes, I remember reading about it a few years ago. We did a paper called "Host for Life," where we mentioned Anthony Myint’s project. At the time, people thought it was nice, but they didn’t quite see the relationship; it was a bit of a stretch. Now it's a very different environment.
Alpha: A version of that project could work in Iberia. Some of the 1% money could be allocated to grants for regenerating the water systems, e.g. restore rivers, groundwater or rain.
There could be educational materials for guests to read if they are interested, explaining why groundwater is important, because the trees need to have access to the groundwater in order to bring it up during the dry season to hydrate the environment. There are various aspects of education that can happen while we're educating the guests at the restaurants, restaurants that could be in hotels.
Anna: Yes. Also a growing number of hotels are actually buying small farms so they can be confident that the vegetables they're serving are nutritious and of quality; they're organic and haven't had any chemicals on them, etc.
So that's not common, but it is starting to happen. Or they're forming relationships with farmers in their local area. The more we can procure locally, the fewer travel miles, and the lower the social, economic, and environmental costs involved. We're starting to create livelihoods for people. And when I say livelihoods, it's not necessarily a top-paying job, as a business executive would have, but it's a very healthy livelihood where children can be raised in a healthy, happy environment, and people feel they're doing meaningful work. It's about thinking at that grassroots community level: what do we need here to help this place flourish? It starts with the most important part: how do we create a community of healthy people working together to make that place thrive?
When I started out in this field, I didn't use the term regeneration. I worked in Flanders, and we just started asking the question, how can the tourism and hospitality sector help this community flourish?
What does that look like? That had a ripple effect. It was done mostly in small to medium-sized communities and a couple of small towns, but it built and built. That program started very modestly, but it was recognized by one of the funding agencies in Europe, Lido, which awarded them for what they did, despite a very low budget.
Alpha: Yeah, there needs to be a focus on building community, it's very intertwined with building the local regenerative system because if you're going to have a local water system, it requires community. The community takes care of the water and the flows.
Anna: Yep, it's all about relationships. We talk about the word community, but we don't know how to create them. There are skill sets now. There is amazing work being done all over the world in inner cities, rural villages, housing estates, and apartment blocks—people pulling others together in community. The techniques and skills to do that well are being documented.
There are so many books, websites, manuals, and coaching resources available now. That wasn't around when I started down this path five or ten years ago. Citizens' assemblies, for example, didn't exist five or ten years ago. Wherever they have been implemented, and we've had quite a few in Europe, they have had a hugely positive impact. Sometimes they come up with far better policies and plans. In fact, many times they are far more innovative and well-thought-out than the plans developed with extensive consultations or consulting efforts because people living in a place are best able to sense—not necessarily analyze—what that place is asking to happen.
You couldn't implement the water initiative without community support. Because water flows. It's that simple.
Alpha: Yes, there are various bioregional networks and projects growing these days, like Joe Brewer's, where they're trying to facilitate the local community to get to know each other while also rebuilding and regenerating their ecology. I think there’s sometimes a little tension in the tourism industry because different people come from various backgrounds and are often not aware of the local community. Part of this ecotourism is about cultural awareness of the community you are visiting and understanding the local norms, rather than creating a sort of crudeness when tourists come in.
I feel like tourism is a very complex issue because it has a lot of negatives and a lot of positives. And we're trying to shift it so that there are more positives and fewer negatives. It's not black and white.
Anna: Absolutely. That's the biggest challenge. It's one of the most complex phenomena on the planet.
Alpha: Tourism shifts money from different places to other places. What we can do is shift tourism money so that more of it goes into regeneration of ecology and local economy.
Anna: Yeah. And that means a lot more smaller businesses. Even in Europe, 98% of tourism businesses even today are small family-owned businesses. People don't realize that. They are enjoying a livelihood. They run a restaurant and they may be trying to get a high return per cover or deal with the peaks and flows, the people coming all year round, as opposed to just six months a year. All of these different issues. But most of them don't want to get so successful that they want to become the next Starbucks.
They want to serve their community. They want to pass a healthy business on down to their children, those that want to inherit it. It's kind of like a farmer. A farmer is not often making lots of money. It's tough, really tough to be a farmer. Some might argue it's really tough to be a small restaurant owner as well. But what I'm saying is they're not driven to expand and multiply. They're driven to make a contribution in their community, make a healthy living. There's nothing wrong with that. It's when we start assuming that everything has to get bigger just to be successful that I think is the problem.
Alpha: The hospitality sector can support small farms is by funneling guests to visit these farms. Often in the hospitality sector, there’s suggestions for guests to visit the local tourist sites or local adventures. There could be also suggestions to visit regenerative farms.
Anna: Your first step would be to get to know who in your community is really trying to do the right thing by the soil. You mentioned soil at the beginning. It's trying to grow healthy food on healthy land. Just find out who they are to start with and open up conversations. Can I buy some of my produce from you? Or how might I be able to help you? It's just having those relationships and seeing the connection to start with. You don't need to take a course on this. You just need to be a human being.
Alpha: Yeah. It's about getting people together. It's getting to know them and then connecting them to the tourists and the guests.
Anna: That's what hospitality is. It goes back to my basic point. Hospitality is a human connection. It's not just about your service, your food, and the bed.
Alpha: There could be available at hotels a menu of different local community projects that could be supported, e.g. soil projects or river restoration or groundwater replenishment projects. Some guests want to help an area flourish ecologically. They could be an options of say investing $1,000 into a groundwater replenishment project in that local community.
Anna: One of the best examples of a regenerative resort, which went into being a resort with the intention of being regenerative from the beginning is in Mexico - Playa Viva. It was a glamping operation initially, but then they got a little bit more sophisticated. Then they had a project of rescuing sea turtles. Then they started a garden to grow their own food. That has just multiplied and they engaged all the people from the local villages involved in the resort. They’ve gone from that to having multiple activities and multiple little businesses that were run by the locals, all around that resort. And now it's going up into the watershed and affecting, in the nicest possible way, other communities around them. It has had this wonderful, rippling expansion effect.
You've got visitors coming and saying, oh, I was so excited to sit down in the morning and spend time with Maria, who's now making jams from the fruit that's growing in the garden. I've invested in her little project, and she's keeping me informed of how it's going.
It makes holidays so much more meaningingful. So everyone benefits.
Alpha: That's a really nice story.
In Costa Rica, the sea turtles are having problems surviving. They're affected by the degradation of the corals. The corals are being affected by the runoff from the industrial agriculture chemicals. What the community realized is that you actually have to work with the local farms that have been converting to more modern pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, to get them to go back to what they were originally doing, the organic processes, because that would lessen the runoff and lessen the coral damage, which would increase the sea turtle population again.
The hospitality sector has a natural interest in restoring ecosystems, which might incentivize them to actually help the regenerative agriculture movement.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. My point is that simple actions, actually, of telling stories, and you can have a part of your hotel, or put on a little notice board in different places. The story could be of this particular person, could be a person working in the garden or a business that they have, or it could be a story about some project down on the lagoon or whatever. But just little ones bring that place to life, literally, as well as metaphorically. They're expressing what that place means to that individual.
I really recommend tieing into a story about a person and their relationship with the water, with the land, with whatever it is, what they're doing, or it could be conservation. In a hotel, if you could do that about people doing things in and around you, it subtly lets visitors know a little bit more about the human pulse in this place. And they start to open their eyes and look when they're out; they might look at it differently. If a fraction of the hotels in the world did even a few of these things, you would begin to see a difference in those communities.
Alpha: Yeah, I like the story aspect, kind of like spreading those stories. And then also, at Playa Viva, you said in Mexico, there's a chance to invest even in local projects. You're actually adding, you're helping grow that community and the ecology, so that's the regenerative part. It's not just minimizing the damage you're doing, but you're actively trying to contribute.
Anna: Yeah. The only obstacle is lack of imagination. When people hear all of these great stories about regeneration, they all had to start somewhere. Mostly, the thing that's lacking is just imagination that, I could be doing that. Stories do infect others. My theory of change, if you want, is simply the power of infection.
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How eco-tourism can help the regenerative water movement : Anna Pollock interview