By: Jools Sampson | January 19, 2021
With many years’ experience organising yoga travel and wellness trips around the world and seeing the impact of tourism – both good and bad – we are committed to travelling in an environmentally and socially responsible way.
We believe that if we do it right, travel can be a force for good. In 2019 we decided to make some significant changes in how we travel and where we work. This goes beyond sustainability and into regenerative practices to restore the health of our planet and not just maintain it.
In 2020 we audited and redesigned the way we work and published our Responsible Retreat plan which sets out our mission to operate in an environmentally and socially responsible way. It’s a transparent look at our business practices and an honest and clear plan for how we will do things better in the future – no greenwashing is happening here!
As part of our commitment to operate in in an environmentally and socially responsible way, we’ve signed up to Tourism Declares, an initiative that supports tourism businesses, organisations and individuals in declaring a climate emergency and taking purposeful action to reduce their carbon emissions as per the advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030.
Like all signatories, we have committed to the following five actions:
1. Develop a ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ within the next 12 months, which sets out our intentions to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade.
2. Share an initial public declaration of our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’, and update on progress each year.
3. Accept current IPCC advice stating the need to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 in order to keep the planet within 1.5 degrees of warming. We’ll ensure our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ represents actions designed to achieve this as a minimum, through delivering transparent, measurable and increasing reductions in the total carbon emissions per customer arising from our operations and the travel services sold by us.
4. Encourage our suppliers and partners to make the same declaration; sharing best practice amongst peers; and actively participate in the Tourism Declares community
5. Advocate for change. We recognise the need for system change across the industry to accelerate a just transition towards carbon-free tourism.
You can read all about our strategy and current status in our Responsible Retreat plan. We have already redesigned our work to reduce our carbon emissions to 50% below 2019 levels and will be updating you here with our 10 year plan to reach 75% below our 2017 levels by 2030 if not before.
Please consider also declaring at www.tourismdeclares.com, and follow on @tourismdeclares on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.
