With travel stalled
for the past year, its sustainable comeback has been a popular topic. Now with
COVID-19 vaccines in distribution, and the prospect of travel reviving later
this year, some travel operators, local governments and nonprofit organizations
are walking the talk, with new eco-oriented programs, trips, transportation
initiatives and preserves.
اضافة اعلان
“I think we will see a
significant pivot in the tourism industry in 2021,” said Gregory Miller, the
executive director of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Travel, noting that
the focus is “not on who is benefiting the travel business, but who’s
benefiting the community.”
The following are some
of the many sustainable initiatives that have been started during the pandemic,
awaiting the return of travelers.
A marine heritage site
From Dana Point,
California, whale-watching operations take visitors on boat trips to see gray
whales, blue whales and, on occasion, racing megapods of dolphins. They also
pick up discarded, deflated balloons — which might be mistaken for food by sea
creatures.
“We tell people, don’t
celebrate with balloons, because this is where they end up,” said Donna Kalez,
the co-president of Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching, a
recreational guide service.
She and Gisele
Anderson, a co-president of another whale-watching operation, Captain Dave’s
Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari, wanted a way to signal to the world that
their region is not just a great place to see whales, but to learn about and
protect them. They found it in the Whale Heritage Site program from the
nonprofit conservation association World Cetacean Alliance to which they
applied. In late January, Dana Point received the designation a Whale Heritage
Site, the first in the United States.
The Whale Heritage
Site designation is meant to identify to travelers not only whale-rich areas,
but those that are engaged in conservation, education and cultural celebrations
of whales. An initial pair of sites, The Bluff, South Africa, and Hervey Bay,
Australia, were designated in 2019. In addition to Dana Point, a region off
Tenerife, Spain, was also named a Whale Heritage Site this year.
“It’s a new program
but we think it could be what National Parks are to the US,” said Ben
Williamson, the programs director for World Animal Protection, US, a global
animal welfare nonprofit which is a partner on the heritage site project. “We
think rolling out these landmarks for sustainable and responsible tourism gives
tourists and the travel industry a marker to show how the wildlife experience
should be done.”
Colorado electrifies
its byways
A key component of
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ climate action plan — which calls for the state to
obtain 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2040 — is
electrifying transportation. More than 30 fast-charging stations for electric
vehicles are planned or available on Colorado’s interstates and highways, or
highly trafficked “corridors.”
Greatly expanding the
range of electric cars, charging facilities about 50 miles apart are coming in
June to six of the state’s 26 Scenic & Historic Byways, which traverse
rural areas and are popular with road trippers.
By encouraging drivers
to spend time in towns with charging stations while their car is being
replenished, the initiative combines economic development and sustainable
transportation.
Biking adventures that
start in the city
Since 1976, when it
organized a cross-country bike ride in celebration of the nation’s
bicentennial, the nonprofit Adventure Cycling Association has specialized in
mapping long-distance cycling routes across the United States. But this year,
the organization, which encourages bicycle transportation, aims to take
travel-by-bike to urban areas in an effort to bridge environmental and social
sustainability.
Its new Short-Trips
Initiative, which will kick off in June, will create maps and suggested
itineraries for trips from one to three nights from eight cities — Atlanta;
Austin, Texas; Boston; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; San Francisco; Seattle; and
Washington, DC — with plans for 30 cities by 2023.
“We wanted to focus on
letting people know they can have a great adventure even if they’re going for
one night,” said Eva Dunn-Froebig, the project director of the initiative.
As a practical matter,
the ACA says anyone can bike camp, which might include having a family member
drive a support vehicle with camping gear or fashioning bike carriers from
kitty litter containers.
“The best bike for
your first tour is the bike you already have,” said Dan Meyer, the deputy
editor of the association’s Adventure Cyclist Magazine.
Saving pangolins
The only fully
scale-covered mammal, pangolins curl up in an armored ball when threatened. It’s
those scales, used in traditional Asian medicine practices, that largely make
them the quarry of poachers. According to the Coalition to End Wildlife
Trafficking Online, more than 1 million of the small, ant-eating animals have
been illegally traded in the last 10 years. Eight species of pangolins, native
to Asia and Africa, range from vulnerable to critically endangered.
“What we’re looking at
here is yet another man-made extinction. And because of the silent and elusive
nature of the pangolin, it could be a very silent extinction,” said Les
Carlisle, the director of conservation at andBeyond, which runs safari camps
and game preserves in Africa, and has started a program to rehabilitate
pangolins rescued from illegal trading. The goal is to establish a breeding
program.
Last year, a captive
pangolin was recovered by authorities, rehabilitated at the Johannesburg
Wildlife Veterinary Hospital and eventually relocated to the 70,560-acre
and Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve, a private preserve and safari camp, in
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where it gave birth to a pup, the first in the
area for an estimated 40 years.
While the preserve is
heavily guarded and the pangolin rehabilitation program is ongoing, its
managers won’t say how many pangolins are living on the property for fear of
drawing the attention of poachers.
Carbon capture for the
people
Travel has a chronic
carbon problem. The emissions associated with travel, by car, ship or by air,
make sustainable travel a stumbling block right from departure. Carbon offsets
have long been a balancing alternative, though most experts agree offsetting isn’t
enough to slow or reverse climate change.
Tomorrow’s Air, a new
climate action group incubated by the Adventure Travel Trade Association, is
taking a different tack, both technologically and socially. It champions carbon
removal and storage, as done by the Swiss company Climateworks — an expensive
process that filters carbon dioxide from the air, sometimes injecting it
underground in basalt rock, where it mineralizes over time.
While the process
seems sound, “the question is, is it scalable?” said Howard Herzog, a senior
research engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied
carbon capture for more than 30 years, noting the high cost of running the
technology relative to the amount of carbon removed. “It’s a lot cheaper to not
emit than to try to capture it later.”
Though the emerging
technology is indeed costly — one Peruvian tour operator estimated that
mitigating a flight between London and Lima with carbon capture technology
would cost $5,040 — Tomorrow’s Air aims to excite people about the future of
carbon removal, invest in it and create a community of travelers and travel
companies around it that will eventually be large enough to sway companies and
governments to engage.