The Fališ Festival is taking place from 5 to 8 September in Šibenik, Croatia. The festival is a platform for critical dialogue and experimentation, and this year it is focusing on the tourism industry, especially in terms of tourism being an important source of profit, albeit one with significant consequences for people’s quality of life and the preservation of common goods. The festival promotes discussion between scholars, activists and citizens with the aim of creating a fairer world.

A Europe that everyone wants to live in

Commonfare is part of the Fališ festival this year. Commonfare.net’s goal is to foster the “welfare of the commons”, which is a participatory form of welfare provision based on collaboration between people living in Europe, at the grassroots level. They are working towards creating a social Europe that respects human rights, including workers’ rights, and affords all the people of Europe an opportunity for decent work and a decent quality of life. In addition to lobbying governments and the EU for better policies, Commonfare also takes the lead in creating a Europe that everyone wants to live in.

Roundtable on profit and the common good in tourism

Commonfare is pleased to support this year’s Fališ Festival and the roundtable discussion on “Tourism: between profit and a common good’ on Wednesday, 5 September at 21:00 at John Paul II square. The speakers will be Krešimir Šakić, Director of the Krk National Park, a popular tourist destination in Croatia, Irina Zupan from the Croatian Agency for the Environment and Nature (HAOP) and a researcher from the Agency for Environmental and maritime research, at the Institute Ruđer Bošković. The Croatian writer and columnist, Jurica Pavičić will moderate the debate.

The roundtable will cover what happens when rentier capitalism combines with the unregulated and uncontrolled use of natural and shared resources. The participants will debate whether it is even possible to make a profit from natural beauty and natural resources while practicing conservation. Where is the line that should not be crossed, even if the lure of making money is great? Is it even possible for money-making and preservation of natural common goods to co-exist?

The debate will also touch on Croatian citizens’ access to the country’s beaches and sites of natural beauty, which have become tourist hotspots in recent years. Croatians are finding it more and more difficult to afford to visit the beaches, cafes and bars that they remember from their childhoods. In a nutshell, the roundtable will take a critical look at the tourism industry in Croatia and how we can ensure everyone can use it equitably, especially Croatians, whose financials means do not match those of visitors from Croatia.

How tourism has actually helped people who live in tourist destinations

On Friday, 7 September at 20:00 in John Paul II Square, Erika Harms, VP at Solimar International, a consulting firm working on supporting global development through sustainable tourism, will present a Commonfare lecture on “Sustainable tourism: Equitable distribution of satisfaction”. She will talk about international experiences with tourism and present examples of how tourism has contributed to the welfare of citizens without spoiling or restricting access to common goods.

Join Commonfare

Join Commonfare at Fališ and learn about other examples of good practices for sustainable and socially fair initiatives, creating a Europe for the citizens of tomorrow.

For the full Fališ program, click here. To become a member of the Commonfare online community and share your stories, experiences and know-how with like-minded people around Europe, click here.

Commonfare.net is part of the PIE News project, a Collective Awareness Platform project financed by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, which seeks to enable people in Europe to access information about poverty support measures in their country. It also allows people to share ideas, skills and good practice examples from around Europe, especially grassroots initiatives, citizens initiatives, NGOs and activism organizations, social enterprises and socially-conscious businesses that are doing their part to respect and preserve common goods.