This article examines tourism stakeholders’ representations of, and barriers to, decarbonisation and degrowth in the Pyrénées Ariégeoises (France), based on 17 semi-structured interviews conducted between October 2024 and April 2025. While decarbonisation is broadly supported, it remains weakly operationalised, with few public or private actors referring to quantified targets or local carbon assessments. Individual transport is consistently identified as the main source of emissions. Key barriers to decarbonisation include limited financial and human resources, institutional complexity, and insufficient coordination between public and private actors. When explicitly questioned about degrowth as a more radical pathway, stakeholders express strong reluctance, as the concept is associated with involuntary economic decline, job losses, and the depopulation of mountain valleys. As a result, actors tend to favour notions such as “transition” or “alternative development models”. Moreover, the absence of a politically shared and credible alternative project further constrains territorial transformation. Drawing on these empirical findings and the existing literature, the article suggests moving beyond the term “degrowth” towards “post-growth”, and emphasises the need to co-construct territorially embedded and multi-level governance frameworks to support decarbonisation and a socially acceptable sustainability transition in mountain tourism destinations.
Salim et al. (Wed,) studied this question.