On Friday, the environmentalists GOB presented a report that considers the Balearic economy ten years from now without the overreliance on a tourism "monoculture".
Two years in the compiling, stretching to one hundred pages and replete with statistics, the report's title is 'Impact on Labour of Ecosocial Transformation in the Balearic Islands: A Degrowth Proposal'. The presentation was made in a room at the Balearic Parliament, GOB spokesperson, Margalida Ramis, saying the report did not represent the end of the project but its beginning. "It is a proposal for debate, and new perspectives can be added. The starting point is degrowth."
A co-author of the report, Luis González Reyes, observed that however much current proposed reforms progress, the islands will remain excessively dependent on tourism. However, the report advocates a diversification of the economy through opening up sectors that currently have little economic impact, establishing a new labour framework, and learning from past mistakes. There can be greater diversification and, he argued, with lower risk of bankruptcy.
Geographer Dr. Ivan Murray of the University of the Balearic Islands, who also participated in the report's preparation, explained that after World War II the islands became a "laboratory for touristification". Since then, and despite the Covid crisis, which was not used as an opportunity for degrowth but rather the opposite, the focus has been on growth and a monoculture with "cheap labour", resource consumption, human pressure, increased rents and environmental conflicts.
The report envisages the economy evolving from an "unproductive model" based on tourism monoculture to an economy structured around food and organic forestry (land use), green industry, and renewable energies. It also considers a transformation of the distribution of labour, with the goal of a 30-hour workweek by 2035.