A holistic and pluralistic perspective for justice through tourism: A regenerative approach

Justice is integral in transformative tourism approaches that call for a complete restructuring of the travel and tourism sector worldwide. While justice through alternative tourism models promotes responsible, sustainable transitions in the tourism sector, these models are frequently informed by a perceived binary between the social and the environmental and long-held patterns of West-centric thought and West versus ‘the rest’ power dynamics, found both in tourism theory and practice and within justice frameworks. In this article, we explore the potential of the regenerative development paradigm to bridge these divides and adopt a pluriversal lens to devise a more just practice of tourism. The holistic, transformative tenets and pluralistic perspective of regenerative development and tourism are used to build a novel framework for justice. The framework’s capacity to analyse, unlock and catalyse place regeneration in different knowledge systems and restore just relationships has been leveraged in two rural areas in Colombia and Ecuador. Collecting data through mixed qualitative methods that combine reflexive ethnography with in situ and online interviews, we identified actions taken to address local inequalities and challenges while fostering pathways to the systemic transformation of residents’ livelihoods. These place-specific actions inspired by ancestral traditions have revitalised the areas’ ecosystems, including local human communities and the latter’s tourism activities. The discussion of results examines the potential of pluriversal regenerative development and tourism principles grounded in diverse knowledge and ethics frames to guide actions for systemic social and environmental justice.