Decarbonised footprints and displaced ears

The first thing to know about tourism PhD graduate Andrus Nomm is that he isn’t the man from Kim Dotcom’s inner circle who was convicted in the Megaupload copyright infringement case and sentenced to a US federal prison. He’s a wholly different Estonian Nomm.

“When Interpol first put out the arrest for this other Andrus Nomm over a decade ago, I was pulled aside at border control in Germany and had to sit in a room with about 20 people looking at me,” Andrus says.

“I speak a bit of German and could hear them discussing whether I’d ‘displaced’ my ears to change my look. I said, ‘Guys, who the hell displaces their ears? It’s easier to fake a passport than do that. I’m not that person.’ It still haunts me!”

This Andrus has made more noble life choices than his criminal namesake. Indeed, he’s spent the past few years researching how the New Zealand tourism industry might best plan for a carbon-friendly future. His PhD topic was ‘Scenarios of tourism and decarbonisation 2040. Implications for regional destinations and their management.’

Andrus was in his 40s when he enrolled as a postgraduate student at Otago’s Department of Tourism. He’d fallen for this field of study more than two decades earlier as an undergraduate at the University of Tartu Pärnu College in his homeland of Estonia. He then spent 15 years deploying his knowledge in tourism marketing roles.

When he arrived in New Zealand in 2015 with his partner (who took up a teaching role at Victoria University of Wellington) Andrus found himself luxuriating in something he’d previously found elusive: spare time. That’s when his thoughts circled back to academia.

“I was sitting in the Botanic Gardens in Wellington thinking about what I could do. I’d always dreamed of doing a master’s and a PhD, so I thought now you have all this free time, you need to go for it.”

His industry experience made him keen to research something with real-world practical value. Otago’s Department of Tourism caught his eye for this reason. Professor Brent Lovelock summed up the department’s academic North Star like this:

“Our broad focus has always been on sustainability – it’s been our go-to mantra since we started back in 1989. Most of the department are at least ankle deep in sustainability research and many of us are up to our eyeballs in it.”

Under the guidance of primary supervisor Associate Professor Julia Albrecht, with co-supervision from Brent, Andrus completed his master’s degree (remotely from Wellington) and was eyeballs-deep in his PhD when Covid-19 upended normal life.

“It was surreal. One good thing for me was that everybody really understood what the carbon footprint of tourism was. You take a plane out of the air and the footprint reduces significantly in a second.”

It was, however, a monstrous time to be initiating conversations with regional tourism operators who were in full crisis mode. His data collection was delayed by nearly a year.

“They didn’t have the headspace for a student project – they were trying to get tourism up and running again. But several top academics in the field of tourism decarbonisation had given me their time for interviews and I didn’t want to let them down. They were excited about my research – and so was I.”

Julia praises Andrus’s tenacity and thinks his conversational pep was likely a handy asset in nudging people Zoom-wards too.

“It’s much to Andrus’s credit that he managed to convince not one but several organisations to participate – he must have been very persuasive. Luckily, he’s blessed with excellent project management skills and a stoic disposition, so he came through both the pandemic and the PhD unscathed.”

“Otago did lots to keep their students going. There were Zoom meetings and chats with other PhD students about how to avoid giving up – and how to get off that video game and get back to your research!” – Andrus Nomm

Andrus says that stoicism was bolstered by the collegial atmosphere among fellow Covid-wobbled researchers.

“Otago did lots to keep their students going. There were Zoom meetings and chats with other PhD students about how to avoid giving up – and how to get off that video game and get back to your research!”

The most prominent finding in Andrus’s research was that tourism needs to look beyond growth and towards justice, equity, and community wellbeing – or risk eroding its social licence to operate.

“If destinations don’t go further than the current minimum laws, other sectors will consider the tourism sector as a climate laggard – as the one that hasn’t invested enough into the planet. There has been enough talking about reducing emissions and caring about the environment. Now we have to step up and make it happen.”

After graduating today, Andrus plans to seek out a postdoctoral research fellowship in Europe – and with a nice new honorific ahead of his surname, those decidedly non-displaced ears should now make it through border security unscrutinised.

- Kōrero by Claire Finlayson, Communications Adviser (Otago Business School)