Submitted by Pr. Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, 2014.06.05
Professor Higgins-Desbiolles has for years displayed a strong interest in the present and future of Kangaroo Island, and proved to be a keen eye on events and developments shaping it. Her short presentation for a common sense proposal, and for a return to quality of life, is worth reading carefully… and slowly sinking it in.
Dr Gabriel Bittar, Kangaroo Island
Why is Kangaroo Island not a Cittaslow Region? Slow food, slow tourism is a fast track to a sustainable and thriving future
A Draft Discussion paper
By Dr Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Senior Lecturer in Tourism
Introduction
In light of recent attention to fast track economic growth on Kangaroo Island following the “Paradise Girt by Sea” document, which touted doubling farm-gate income and tourists numbers, one has to ask why has no one actually engaged with the Cittaslow movement?
This movement and its aims are described more fully below but it represents an opportunity to combine the assets and attributes in which Kangaroo Island excels. One should pause for reflection as we at this moment look at putting in place bodies such as the Kangaroo Island Futures Authority [webmaster: see also KIFA’s narrow objectives are those of government and tourism developers — Cr Walkom, 2014.05.18] and now the Commissioner for Kangaroo Island, to ask ourselves what kind of future are we trying to build for ourselves and our children?
And we can see the cleavages that disagreements over previous developments and initiatives have wrought — the Tandanya development, Southern Ocean Lodge, the KI Pro Surf and Music Festival – which has resulted in hostile camps who are identified as pro-business and those who are identified as pro-environment. Could we find solutions where we heal these cleavages and create a prosperous, shared future that meets the needs for income and jobs while creating a thriving community and a healthy environment? Maybe Cittaslow offers such an opportunity.
About Cittaslow and the Slow Food Movement
“We are looking for towns where people are still curious about times past, towns rich in theatres, squares, cafes, workshops, restaurants and spiritual places, towns with untouched landscapes and fascinating craftsmen, where people are still aware of the slow passing of the seasons, marked by genuine products, respecting tastes, health and spontaneous customs…” – Original Cittaslow Manifesto
As the Goolwa Cittaslow website states, “In 1986, the concept of ‘slow food’ was introduced in Italy. It was a reaction against the growing ‘fast foods’ industry that was becoming widespread. SLOW FOOD encourages regions to identify and use local food and produce and allow time to enjoy eating with family and friends. Over 50 countries, including Australia now embrace this philosophy” (http://www.cittaslowgoolwa.com.au/whatis.html).
Cittaslow allows multiple outcomes for communities, societies and economies that has an exponential power to bring benefits to those that harness its possibilities. Particularly, it allows agricultural producers to form relationships with consumers that are nourishing in multiple and important ways. Additionally the slow-food movement has sparked a slow tourism movement which offers a way to marry agriculture, tourism, sustainability and community thriving.
Cittaslow Principles
* Encourage diversity not standardisation
* Support and encourage local culture and traditions
* Work for a more sustainable environment
* Support and encourage local produce and products
* Encourage healthy living especially through children and young people
* Work with the local community to build these values
* Develop a gradual process to achieve all the aspirations (http://www.cittaslowgoolwa.com.au/whatis.html).
Literature on Slow Food
The slow-food movement and its associated phenomenon of slow tourism have come under considerable study. These offer us insights into the value of these initiatives and inform us of their possibilities in being harnessed for community purposes and as transformational tools. I will only briefly review some literature here.
One key insight offered in the literature on slow food is the way connecting over food can lead to societal outcomes of great impact. For instance, Mair, Sumner and Rotteau (2008) have discussed the politics of eating through case study analyses of three recent movements: slow food, food justice and organic farming. These authors argued that food practices such as the slow-food initiative can be understood as “a motivator for civic engagement, a source of knowledge, and a catalyst for change” (2008, p. 399). The discussions and relationships built within communities as producers and consumers enter into long-term relationships that are built on more than just profit motives results in impacts that are multiple and multi-fold.
Goodman has critically analysed the proliferation in such alternative food networks and suggests that in some cases such efforts are “building economic geographies of care through consumption” (2008, p. 14). This care is multi-level including care of the self, care of other places’ people and environments (through say fair trade and organic practices) and care through the building of relationships, particularly between producers and consumers. Such a caring economy is more sustainable environmentally, socially and economically and contrasts strongly with the lack of connection and responsibility that the international trade economy is currently predicated on.
The slow-food movement raises issues of ecological sustainability, food justice and long-term community development and well-being. For example, Fonte (2006) demonstrated how the slow-food movement offers an insight into the environmental injustices of global food production systems and makes us engage with the ecological limits to growth and how we might address these through our approach to food. Slow food brings with it an interest in locality and place, a connectedness with ecology which modern society is in danger of losing and tools for sustainable development that offer important alternatives to societies around the globe.
Slow food also offers a wider challenge for the way we organise and conduct business in the global community. Peace (2008, p. 39) asserted that the Slow-Food movement “strives to establish a critical analysis of the power exercised by global forces over the local production and consumption of food, and seriously asks what can be done in response”. Such a challenge is vital in a world that is confronted by multiple crises (ecological, financial and social) and seems incapable of meeting these through current structures, processes and institutions. Slow food offers local solutions, local engagements and local network building which may offer the local empowerment which has been unfortunately sapped in the drive to globalisation. It should also offer greater diversity and creativity in options and solutions which is also something that is needed as an antidote to homogenisation and McDonaldisation of societies and economies.
Finally the slow-food movement has inspired a slow tourism movement so that slow food’s impacts expand beyond solely improving the quality of life of local residents to offering creative, restorative and connected holiday options for tourists (Nilsson et al., 2007). Slow tourism in parallel to slow food invites tourists to stay longer, experience the full quality of life of the places they visit, make real connections with the host communities and fully immerse themselves in the local area. This “pays off” in tangible economic terms by buying local and staying longer, but also pays off in social and environmental terms. A community can secure the same amount of economic value while hosting fewer visitors, resulting in fewer negative social and environmental impacts. Such tourism may also foster longer term connections to the place and result in repeat visitation. And local place attachment fostered through slow food and slow tourism should result in responsible visitors who value local produce, respect the community’s values and ways of living and value and protect its environmental assets. It again represents a strong contrast to mass, fast tourism which shows no such place attachment, and frequently results in negative social and environmental impacts with little economic reward to the local people and economy.
The context of economic, environmental and social crises
In the wake of economic crises that have resulted from the 2008 global financial crisis, we have to asks ourselves how long we can continue predicating our futures on an economic system which is not working and is subjecting whole nations to years of grave difficulties and instability. In countries such as Spain that have faced the worst impacts of this, slow food and slow tourism have been turned to as tools to re-build (see: http://www.slowfood.com/international/food-for-thought/focus/154563/is-slow-tourism-the-way-forward-for-the-pigs/q=3146AE). Combined with the clear environmental limits we are beginning to face as we seriously analyse what global climate change and human induced global warming means for our future, we arel beginning to see that economies built on global exporting strategies and dependent on fickle international tourist markets are too precarious and unsustainable.
And yet, the Paradise Girt By Sea policy document gambles Kangaroo Island’s future on doubling farm-gate income and tourists numbers in an era when we are likely to face enormous challenges which will undermine economies dependent on enticing international visitors and selling commodities on the global market, especially those that are discretionary, luxury consumer goods.
What could the Cittaslow model and slow tourism model offer Kangaroo Island?
This should be explored by a full study. However, at first glance it offers an opportunity to capitalise on all the qualities and assets that Kangaroo Island (KI) excels in. This includes the branding that KI has achieved as an island with rare environmental values, with an island community that offers a unique cultural experience and more recently as a quality food and wine producer. Currently these are inadvertently sold as separate niche market assets. The Cittaslow model offers the opportunity to think through how these make a holistic package that could create a viable, thriving future for the Island and Islanders. Joining the Cittaslow movement could offer the Island’s residents, businesses and leadership a reason to come together in conversations about creating a securefuture together built on a sound foundation of real community well-being, more impervious to the impending crises we are likely to confront and creating synergies that will offer benefits far beyond the inputs needed to achieve them. Rather than being myopically focused on international markets and visitors, slow food and slow tourism advise us to build on integrating our food and wine production with our tourism offerings and work on fostering relationships that invite the visitors to stay longer, experience the full range of community offerings and embed themselves in the place and the lives of the locals.
Lastly, I note that Goolwa will host the 2016 International Cittaslow General Assembly. What an apt inspiration to encourage us to explore this option for Kangaroo Island. It is just enough time to start the conversations, planning and actions which could see us offer Kangaroo Island as the newest but most prosperous Cittaslow region in the movement.
Bibliography
Connelly, S., Markey, S. & Roseland, M. (2011). Bridging sustainability and the social economy: Achieving community transformation through local food initiatives. Critical Social Policy, 31 (2), 308–324.
Fonte, M. (2006). Slow Food’s Presidia: What do Small Producers do with Big Retailers? In T. Marsden & J. Murdoch, eds. Between the Local and the Global (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 203–240.
Goodman, M. (2008). Towards visceral entanglements: Knowing and growing economic geographies of food. Environment, politics and development working paper series, Department of Geography, King’s College London, Paper 5, pp. 1–25.
Hall, C.M. & Gossling, S. (2013). Reimagining sustainable culinary systems. In C.M. Hall & S. Gossling, eds. Sustainable Culinary Systems: Local foods, innovation, tourism and hospitality. London: Routledge, 293–304.
Hewitt, B. (2009). The Town that Food Saved: How one community found vitality in local food. New York: Rodale.
Mair, H., Sumner, J. & Rotteau, L. (2008). The politics of eating: Food practices as critically reflexive leisure, Leisure/Loisir, 32 (2), 379–405.
Nilsson, JH., Svärd, A-C., Widarsson, Å. & Wirell, T. (2007). “Slow” destination marketing in small Italian towns. Paper presented at the 16th Nordic Symposium in Tourism and Hospitality Research. Helsingborg, September 27–29.
Slow Food USA (2010). Slow Food USA: Good, Clear and Fair [online]. Slow Food USA. Available from: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/good_clean_fair/ [Accessed 28 November 2012].
Cittaslow works in Goolwa because the local community is united and has a population large enough to crunch the numbers .the council over in Goolwa has been very supportive financially and in kind. The Island is a different ball game entirely
The island is also in a unique position to adopt the slow food concept because it is an island with defined geographic boundaries … A consideration and discussion of the implications would be worthwhile as it appears to be in line with some of the planning which has been done by for example council…
It seems that it is appropriate for academics to sit comfortably outside of the day to day engagement and lob comments in from afar whilst happily accepting economic sustenance from those who actually earn a living from offering a service that people are prepared to pay for.
Scarcely veiled criticism of Southern Ocean Lodge is interesting – it would be interesting to engage with producers and ask them who is buying their goods – Southern Ocean Lodge acquire in excess of 70% of their protein and probably a great percentage of other produce, directly from local producers.
Why has KI not engaged with Slow Food? It is simply that there are so few people trying their hardest to engage with branding, marketing, farmers markets, NRM, tourism, voluntourism and all of the other expectations that yet another volunteer group is just too hard. Those that DO try to participate run the risk of criticism by “holier than thou” do nothings who I expect will identify themselves immediately by having a crack at me for having the audacity to make such a statement.
Well well well….good try, Freya, and as you can see the problems are highlighted by the two above responses. Suffice it to say that thinking outside the square is clearly neither a strong point or appreciated in some quarters.
[Submitted 2014.06.09 by Scott Mcdonald:]
Further to the thoughts of Freya.
Reading the book “The Poisonwood Bible” (Barbara Kingsolver) made me think more on this subject.
It is set at the time of the Congo Crisis, mostly early 1960s, and strongly criticises First World attitudes to African cultures. This story of a woefully misguided and bigoted Baptist minister in a remote community is set against the disaster of Belgian government, the enslavement of the people, the murder of the first president of Independent Congo by US agents, the establishment of the obscene rule of Mobutu, a US puppet, and the murderous intervention in Angola by US-backed forces, as seen through the eyes of the minister’s children. The author makes the point over and over again that the people have no need of the kind of help that is provided, that the Congo is rich in mineral wealth, the people rich in culture and heritage and satisfied with their millennia-old way of life which they know works, despite it appearing impoverished and disease ridden to the outside. Left alone, the Congo had the means of its own salvation.
In a different book, Chris Williams’ “Ecology and Socialism” the author highlights the failure of the current capitalist system to respond in any way to the challenges of the future, and suggests that the only likely solutions to these challenges will come from widespread and dramatic social changes. He looks at the writings of Marx and Engels and legislation introduced into post-WW1 Russia by Lenin which show how advanced their ecological thinking was at the time, before Stalin absolutely queered the pitch. From these theses Williams puts forward a Marxist-Socialist view of economics and the environment through which the global community could regain their sense of place within the bio-ecological sphere of the planet.
(Note: the concept of “bio-sphere” was created by Vladimir Vernadski in 1926).
Amongst other issues, he advocates immediate and very large scale changes to establish vast new “alternative energy” sources, changes to land ownership laws, fair distribution of wealth, and by what ever means possible, changes in the present system which allows capital to be concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority of people.
Wow… that’s a mouthful! Of course, he is not the only one; discussions with eminent scientists which were held this year at WOMAD highlighted the same needs… particularly for alternative energy and wealth distribution, and also emancipation for women.
But HOW???
We have probably only 20 years left to make vast changes to the way we treat the earth before we begin to inherit the fruits of our labour. What conceivable “tipping effect” or trigger can be activated to persuade those of us who are privileged to take a cut in everything we have worked so hard for? Will Gina and Bill give all that they have to the poor and follow… whatever? And is that a necessary factor of making the change?
Williams suggests that the manufacture of 70 million cars each year (adding to,the current 10 billion already on the planet) is entirely unnecessary and very counterproductive when trying to combat climate change, and I can’t help think he is spot on!
Could the same industry turn its attention to the mass production of alternative energy systems, and the expansion of electric rail and commuter bus systems, and the centralising of living areas with acceptable and pleasing surrounding environments… thus continuing employment and stimulating the economy?
Can the World embark upon a massive tree planting exercise, global re-afforestation, the establishment of vast areas of growing plants which are EXCLUDED from any form of cropping, as a simple means of carbon storage?
Is it possible to re-arrange the way we do agriculture by making small scale localised food growing profitable, and the transporting of unseasonal goods over vast distances by road unprofitable (which it already would be but for subsidies and the undervaluing of the products)?
Is it possible for KI [Kangaroo Island] to become self-sufficient in food basics, even if it still has also to rely upon importing some goods to make life a bit more comfortable? We grow potatoes, wheat, canola, honey, broccoli, eggs, sheep, cattle, pigs,…..in the past people killed their own meat, milked their cows and made butter and cheese, traded vegetables and other produce… what prevents us from doing this now, perhaps as a by-product of our current export system?
Is it over-regulation, or the demands of corporate empires?
Scott Mcdonald
Pelican Lagoon
Don’t get me wrong – not against the concept espoused by Mr Petrini – in fact we do our best to follow the premise within our own household and business. My point is we are always given lots of advice (read any weekly paper) largely by people who do not participate in the day to day running of community or industry organisations. Thinking outside the square has nothing to do with it – it is the small number of people working in the square which is the issue. We are too few as a community to run what we already try to – a Cittaslow group would probably have to be part of the newly amalgamated food+wine producers group otherwise the producers would be spread even thinner…
I am suggesting Cittaslow as a process for much more than just economic development. I am committed to Kangaroo Island as a non-resident property owner and as an advocate of the TOMM as best practice community-initiated tourism management. I offered this exploratory advice in the hopes of generating interest in the idea and collaborating with those interested to examine its potential.