Bringing compassion to tourism
Having a business strategy for nature is increasingly common. From consumers to investors, many people look for this when deciding whether to use or support your business. A strategy can also help with your environmental reporting – a requirement that is constantly expanding, especially after the global adoption of the Biodiversity Plan in 2022 and with the EU working on new far-reaching legislation
Creating a strategy for nature may seem like a huge job, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. For a start, it isn’t just one more sustainability-related strategy. Sustainability is all about nature, so a nature strategy unites all your sustainability initiatives under a single set of goals and provides a context to streamline and prioritise them.
Ultimately, a nature strategy is an investment. It puts your business in a strong position to respond to the ever-increasing focus on these issues. From public communications to ESG reporting to regulatory compliance, once you have it you won’t know how you lived without it
The basic steps for integrating nature protection through a business are straightforward. They have been presented in many different ways over the years, but recently several expert organisations have rallied around the ‘ACT-D’ formula – Assess, Commit, Transform and (continuously) Disclose. This is the presentation used by Business for Nature and their Now for Nature initiative.
At ANIMONDIAL we use the Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap. This has been developed specifically for the Travel & Tourism sector and is endorsed by the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership (the World Travel & Tourism Council, UN Tourism and the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance). The Roadmap follows the same principles as other guidance but is designed to be more accessible for smaller businesses and focus on issues that are particularly relevant to T&T.
Before creating your strategy, you need to have some context. What does the strategy cover and what is it intended to achieve? To answer these questions, you need to make decisions on issues like materiality, scope and value chain. This last one is especially important for T&T where so many businesses can be involved in delivering the overall service, and hence be responsible for the impacts it has.
Now you need to make a full assessment of your nature-related risks, dependencies and impacts. There can be quite a lot to consider at this stage, so make sure you have suitable internal expertise and capacity or use an external consultancy to help.
One tried and tested solution is ANIMONDIAL’s Natour Impact assessment tool. This is tailored to the T&T industry and provides a comprehensive evaluation of your business processes to safeguard nature, animal welfare, communities and sustainable consumption. We will walk you through the process, with all the information submitted through our online portal, before providing you with a full report, debrief and individual recommendations for next steps. (To find out more, just drop us a line.)
Based on the findings of the assessment, you need to define your response. This is likely to take the form of a commitment or a nature policy, which sets outs the overall goals that the strategy will enable you to meet. This should cover all the key issues in ways that are relevant and practical for your business, and specify actionable goals.
Developing meaningful, progressive policy statements is something we have lots of experience of at ANIMONDIAL. Whether or not you have done the full Natour Impact assessment, if you want help creating a policy statement that gives you purpose and direction, don’t hesitate to get in touch !
Now you are ready to start work on the strategy. This will lay out the actions that you plan to take in order to achieve the policy goals.
Remember that existing strategies, for instance for carbon emissions, plastics use or energy consumption, can be slotted into the nature strategy as they are. There is no need to reinvent the wheel! However, this may be a good time to review them and ensure that they align with your overall business goals for nature.
Obviously, a critical element of the strategy will be reducing your negative impacts. The key principle for doing this is the Mitigation Hierarchy. This is defined slightly differently in different contexts but for Nature Positive Tourism it is presented as Avoid (the best option), Minimise, Restore, Regenerate (the last resort). For more detail on the hierarchy and how to apply it, see page 40 of the World Travel & Tourism Council report Nature Positive Travel & Tourism (2022).
The strategy should also look at ways that the business can help to restore nature and enhance biodiversity. Simple ways of doing this, like giving to charities or purchasing biodiversity credits, are only part of the solution, at best. It is important to look for restoration opportunities on your sites, in your operations and through your value chain. The goal is for restoring nature to be part of your business, not a drain on your profits.
Partnering with nature restoration projects in destinations opens up many opportunities to support their work beyond just funding. The ability to share important messages with travellers, and often to connect them directly with restoration activities, can unlock huge benefits. Logistic support can also be very valuable, as can strategic support and advocacy within the business community and political sphere. Partnerships like this can benefit the travel business as well with enriched visitor experiences, technical support and local knowledge.
ANIMONDIAL can facilitate partnerships like this through our Animal Protection Network of approved on-the-ground organisations and our bespoke Biodiversity Partnerships service.
Other issues that your strategy should consider include:
• Engaging your supply chain to ensure that they align with your values and goals;
• Connecting with destinations to ensure that your actions are felt in the same place as your impacts;
• Setting SMART targets (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound) and where possible validating them through the Science-Based Targets Network;
• Including actions to monitor and report on your actions and to communicate the outcomes to customers and the business community.
It is also important to make sure that you mainstream biodiversity values throughout your organisation. Implementing your strategy will much easier and more effective if it is understood across departments and especially at senior management level. One way to do this is through trainings offered by ANIMONDIAL. We can provide anything from a one hour introductory presentation to a multi-day workshop built around your unique policy and strategy. Just contact us and we’ll explain all the options.
Of course, embarking on a journey like this can be a lot easier if you have an experienced guide. That’s why ANIMONDIAL is always here to help. Whether you need a full strategy development service or someone to fill specific gaps in capacity or expertise, we can tailor our services to your situation. Just drop us a line for more details
Biodiversity is the variety of all life on Earth – the different plants, animals, and microorganisms. It is essential for the provision of a myriad of ecosystem services that provide for basic human needs, underpin human health and wellbeing, and help us to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to climate change.
Biodiversity loss is already having a catastrophic impact around the world. It is no longer considered just an environmental issue but a fundamental threat to our economies and societies, and our ability to fulfil the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
On 22nd May, the UN International Day for Biodiversity 2024, individuals, businesses, governments and society are being urged to highlight the ways in which they are supporting the implementation of the UN Biodiversity Plan (also called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework). Everyone has a role to play, so everyone can Be Part of the Plan.
Last month, the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership, in collaboration with ANIMONDIAL, launched the Nature Positive Travel & Tourism in Action report. This highlights actions taken by both private and public Travel & Tourism organisations, from across the world, to protect nature and enhance biodiversity. Travel & Tourism is highly dependent on nature (biodiversity and ecosystem services) and can also have a substantial influence on biodiversity loss – in both positive and negative ways.
Many of the case studies presented in the report feature innovative collaborations between private and public organisations and local communities. They show how diverse organisations can work together to protect animal welfare and endangered species, prevent biodiversity loss, and regenerate nature. Please do check out these case studies, which we hope will inspire and empower meaningful change.
Reversing biodiversity loss and protecting nature does not need to be a huge effort. There are some simple actions that anyone can take to protect and restore biodiversity and to Be Part of the Plan.
As a start, you could:
– Install timer or sensor switches on lights and heating systems– Measure your carbon emissions and progressively reduce them through an action plan
– Capture rainwater and use for flushing toilets, washing clothes, watering gardens, etc.
– Switch to paper straws, cardboard plates and wooden cutlery as disposable options
– Plant native species and wildflowers and minimise use of pesticides
– Check out sustainable options for your key purchases and stick to FSC timber, MSC seafood, etc.
– When looking for suppliers, start local and include sustainability performance in your evaluation
– Safeguard animal welfare, buy high-welfare foods, and ensure wildlife items are legally sourced
– Start supporting a local, community-based nature project – even just through a collection box
– Talk to your partners, suppliers, staff and customers about your nature positive ambitions
It is so easy to Be Part of the Plan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030!
To be as effective and impactful as possible when aiming to mitigate your impacts on nature, it helps to identify and measure your nature-related risks. That way you can see where and how your operations and activities are directly or indirectly contributing to biodiversity loss. This, in turn, provides useful insight on where to focus your efforts and resources to best mitigate impacts and build on opportunities to protect and restore nature. This approach is often more impactful and cost-effective than simply applying generic actions, like those listed above, without looking at your own specific case.
ANIMONDIAL has created an evaluation tool to help Travel & Tourism businesses understand their environmental footprint and measure their operational impacts on biodiversity. Called NATOUR IMPACT, it combines both legal obligations and industry best practice to assess business performance and guide actions to halt and reverse biodiversity loss within destinations. Tailored for the Travel & Tourism sector, it offers a simple but effective approach for businesses to Be Part of the Plan.
Your action on International Day for Biodiversity could be as quick and easy as booking in a call with ANIMONDIAL to discuss how you can start your nature positive journey.
Whatever you choose to do, the message is simple. We all can, and should, be doing something to ensure the health of the planet for future generations.
Take action for nature today:
Find out more about the UN International Day for Biodiversity (22 May).
Sign up in support of a nature-positive future and receive free guidance.
Refer to the Nature Positive Travel & Tourism in Action report (May, 2024).
Check out ANIMONDIAL’s Natour Impact environmental impact assessment tool.
Following on from the 2022 Nature Positive Travel & Tourism report published by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), also prepared by ANIMONDIAL, this new document takes a giant step forward. More than a blueprint for change, it is a handbook for sector transformation.
Firstly, it is delivered by a collaboration of industry bodies at the highest international level – the WTTC, UN Tourism and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance. This partnership is critical for mobilising the entire sector. Businesses can be limited in their ability to realise Nature Positive Tourism if government policies and strategies do not support them. At the same time, government attempts to change their tourism frameworks face countless problems if the private sector is not aligned and co-operative.
Through the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership we now have a road map for the entire sector, public and private, to chart a course to a nature positive future for Travel & Tourism.
Secondly, this report focuses on action. The 2022 report laid out the urgency of the global need to act for nature, the particular relevance of this issue to Travel & Tourism, and the recommended strategic approach for businesses in the sector (the Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap). This report moves on from there to grapple with the specifics of putting these principles into practice.
In doing this, it is guided by the results of an industry-wide consultation that ANIMONDIAL led last year on behalf of the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership. This was a multi-stage process involving over 50 experts from the public and private sectors, civil society and academia. It compiled the sector’s best understanding of its nature-related risks and impacts as well as the challenges and opportunities it is likely to encounter in realising Nature Positive Tourism. (A review of the outcomes of the consultation is available here).
With these insights as a guide, the new report provides practical guidance for businesses of all sizes and types (and for public sector bodies as well). This includes a ‘Biodiversity Basics’ tip for every stage in the Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap, explaining how businesses with limited capacity can easily but effectively begin their nature positive journey.
It also includes over 30 diverse case studies from around the world, illustrating real-world approaches to all the key areas of action. These case studies are what really bring Nature Positive Tourism to life. Every business will face different challenges, but the message of these inspiring stories is that solutions can be found, new ideas and new models are waiting to be explored, and the power of Travel & Tourism to be a Guardian Of Nature is only just being discovered.
With apologies to Winston Churchill, this report is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
A lot of work still needs to happen across the sector – within individual businesses, government bodies, associations, alliances and beyond. We will continue to do that work and to help others do it. We plan to support the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership as they roll out an ongoing programme of events and resources, expected to include webinars, further case studies and representation for the sector at the level of global biodiversity policy.
As you can tell, we are very happy to have played a part in bringing this report to the sector, and to the global business community. Nature Positive Tourism materials are already used by Business for Nature in their sector-specific guidance, which encourages similar initiatives in several key business sectors. It is fitting that Travel & Tourism – which inspires so much love of nature and has such influence over what happens to it – should be among the most progressive in this field.
As lovers of both nature and travel, we believe in a future where the two can co-exist, supporting and enhancing each other. Reading this report, we can see this future come into focus – and we hope everyone else who reads it will too.
Please take a moment to download the report and see how it can inspire you.
ANIMONDIAL has been working with the leading agencies of the Travel & Tourism industry to ensure its sectors and businesses have the information, guidance and tools necessary to scope, assess and reduce their nature-related risks, dependencies and impacts. This has produced a universal approach, called “Nature Positive Tourism”, that encourages businesses to go beyond sustainability and begin to compensate for unavoidable impacts by building back biodiversity.
This year, ANIMONDIAL will focus on raising greater awareness of Nature Positive Tourism: what it is and how businesses can embrace it. A Travel and Tourism Overview has been produced with the global coalition Business for Nature and a further report, Nature Positive Travel & Tourism in Action, will soon be published by the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership. These both support business action and share practical examples of how businesses are benefiting from this approach.
EXODUS Adventure Travels, a 50-year-old UK-based tour operator, is one such business that has integrated the Nature Positive Tourism approach into its operations. Keen to know more, I caught up with Rochelle Turner, Head of Sustainability at EXODUS, to find out how they are getting on.
“It’s been fundamental to our trips that we tread lightly and respect the natural and cultural environment. In the last few years, we’ve taken to ensuring that we’ve got more documented proof of these actions and that we challenge any practices that don’t align with our vision of being a nature positive business.”
Rochelle explains that the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2019) was the starting point for their plan. It explained the five key drivers of biodiversity loss and helped them identify actions to minimise or avoid unsustainable activities and work towards restoring nature. EXODUS adopted a “simple plan of remove, reduce and restore”, a process aligned with Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap presented in the World Travel & Tourism Council report (WTTC, 2022).
“Through our plan, we identified the things we need to remove entirely (i.e. plastics, any negative wildlife interactions, other waste) and take action to reduce our negative impacts (i.e. reducing our carbon emissions) and where we had an opportunity to bring about positive change and restore nature (investing in rewilding and citizen science activities). All these actions form the basis of our Nature Positive Plan upon which we set goals to 2023. I’ve now been updating this with new actions across the next 3-5 years.”
It is encouraging to see businesses proactively adopt Nature Positive Tourism and demonstrate how it can be applied practically, although this is not without its challenges.
“One of the main challenges as a tour operator is trying to enact change where we don’t have direct control. We can set the policies and minimum standards, but at times and in certain places, it is difficult for them to be reached,” explained Rochelle. “Just a small example – we have a goal to not provide any single use water bottles to our guests and only ever use refillable bottles with clean, purified water. We’re at 94% which is great, but we want 100%. In certain parts of the world and particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic, we are still searching for solutions.”
ANIMONDIAL received similar feedback from a peer review consultation last year – noting the challenges of Nature Positive Tourism integration through the supply and value chains. This will be another area of focus for ANIMONDIAL this year as we continue to work with the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, the WTTC and the World Tourism Organisation to drive industry-level solutions. However, these potential obstacles shouldn’t stop more Travel & Tourism businesses committing to the Nature Positive Tourism approach and contributing to efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
Rochelle emphasises the need for businesses to keep their nature positive action plans simple.
“It helps to communicate the message internally and embed the required actions within people’s roles. It also helps provide that all-important evidence and proof that what we say about our trips and how we operate is real and based on a thorough appreciation for what truly brings positive change for nature.”
Travel & Tourism businesses can certainly learn from each other and ANIMONDIAL will be encouraging and facilitating this throughout 2024, noting the need to act now for nature. This will include a series of webinars and practical guidance, delivered through the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership, and various other initiatives to support business and encourage a joined-up approach to protecting nature.
Asked about the priorities for EXODUS this year, Rochelle shared the need to review their Nature Positive Plan, combine their climate change mitigation commitments, and ensure their collective goals align with the Global Goals for Nature.
Whatever your Nature Positive Tourism goals are for the coming year, ANIMONDIAL can help guide you through them. Contact us or book in a call to find out how.
Listed reports and references:
I drafted the Travel & Tourism overview, with Business for Nature, which has since been endorsed by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (SHA). It provides a compelling insight into how Travel & Tourism not only relies on biodiversity and nature but, when managed well, can also support and enhance it. We have the potential to become an agent of change across the whole of society – protecting animals and restoring nature and biodiversity in global destinations.
This is reminiscent of my work with the tourism sector in creating the first ever guidance on animal welfare and how these guidelines then helped shape the future of how animals are treated in tourism. (Animal welfare refers to the physical and mental state of an animal and their ability to cope with given situations such as use in tourism activities.)
It was 15 years ago that I was approached by the Head of Sustainability for the Federation of Tour Operators (a consortium of mainstream tourism businesses) to help introduce the animal welfare topic to the Travel & Tourism sector. In the early 2000s up to 70% of excursion product involved animals – from cultural practices, like elephant or camel riding, to more extreme activities like swimming with sea lions or jaguars and even holding snakes and lions! Tourism businesses had started to question the treatment of the animals involved and the potential risk to their customers, concerns which sparked the need for some industry guidance.
At that time the UK Government’s Animal Welfare Bill was progressing through Parliament. With a focus on the importance of safeguarding the welfare of animals, it recognised their sentience (ability to experience pain or suffering) and required anyone who has animals under their care to ensure they have a life worth living. Working with my colleagues at the time – the sustainability leads in major tourism businesses, the FTO and then ABTA, and other stakeholders – we launched the ABTA Animal Welfare Guidelines in 2013 to much fanfare.
The Guidelines consist of a set of concise booklets, each focused on a type of animal activity (Animals in a Captive Environment, Working Animals, etc.) and containing a set of advised minimum requirements together with best practice guidance. It was a great project to help pioneer, it defined my future career, and to this day the ABTA Animal Welfare Guidelines continue to improve standards in animal care and shape the involvement of animals in tourism. It has even helped influence the new UK law to ban the domestic advertising and sale of Low-Welfare Activities Abroad.
I see ANIMONDIAL’s current work in helping to develop the Nature Positive Tourism approach in a similar light. This approach builds on the legacy of the ABTA Animal Welfare Guidelines – that individual animal welfare matters – and widens our duty of care to the protection of all living things (‘biodiversity’) and their collective ability to support our well-being and survival. The guidance which we helped produce with the WTTC, SHA and UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) cuts through the complexity of a similarly technical but vital topic. Much like the ABTA Guidelines, it provides insight into how tourism operations may have negative impacts, and what mitigation actions are necessary to avoid, minimise or reverse them.
However, for biodiversity, we do not have the ten years that it took the Travel & Tourism sector to fully adopt and apply the ABTA Animal Welfare Guidelines. Governments, businesses and society are required to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Fortunately, the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership is working on a range of resources to make this possible. We have thorough reports, a ‘Toolbox of Nature Positive Tourism Resources’, and a wealth of practical case studies (soon to be published). These will provide the broad spectrum of tourism businesses with the information and support they need to reduce their operational impacts and build back nature in their destinations.
ANIMONDIAL is also here to help, of course. Building on our long-term knowledge of animal welfare and the protection of animals in tourism, we have produced the first ever evaluation tool for Travel & Tourism, to help businesses identify and measure their specific impacts on animals and nature. After years of development and testing, NATOUR IMPACT, is now available to businesses that are looking for a bespoke assessment of their operations and guidance on where their limited resources are best directed to protect biodiversity and nature.
Evidence indicates that the operation of both value and supply chains, largely integrated in the destination, are particularly harmful to nature. Just imagine all the raw materials that Travel & Tourism businesses need to operate. There’s food and freshwater, of course, but then there are the natural materials used for energy and fuel, furniture and furnishings, and all the guest activities that happen in the destination. Travel & Tourism business ultimately need to make sure that the sourcing of materials and their activities on the ground are sustainable and not detrimental to the locations concerned. Flying in millions more people a year into urban and rural locations can take its toll, and on occasion, this causes restricted availability of those resources to local communities. This has generated ill feeling towards tourists and even unrest as local people raise concern about the impact. In some locations, numbers of tourists have been restricted as a result.
Seeking reassurance that the sourcing of raw materials and tourism activities do not have a negative impact can be complex. It requires a need for each business to assess their dependencies and impacts on nature but to also consider the needs of local people. This will need to include an assessment of the business’ direct operations but also their indirect operations, through their respective suppliers.
Working with WTTC and its partners, detailed implementation guidance is now available for T&T businesses (referred to as Nature Positive Tourism), to specifically assess direct business operations. However, unless a tourism business monopolises the activities of its suppliers, ensuring full integration of its Nature Positive commitments, it far more difficult. The assessment of the dependencies and impacts of supply and demand to the destination activities or excursions will largely be reliant on the approachability and interest of the supplier. Another approach may therefore be required to ensure suppliers are mindful of their impacts and are actively seeking to reduce them.
ANIMONDIAL advocates supplier auditing as a guaranteed option to ensuring the right measures are in place and activities are aligned with the business client policies. This is a process, usually undertaken by a third party, that assesses the supplier against the operational requirements of the tour operator, measuring compliance, and providing remedial guidance to encourage improvement. This action has already been deployed to improve animal welfare in global attraction suppliers, and I believe a similar approach is possible using Nature Positive Tourism criteria.
Working with our Partners, the Preverisk Group, ANIMONDIAL is building on its animal welfare auditing criteria to incorporate nature positive objectives and actions. A robust and comprehensive Nature Positive supplier auditing service will soon be available to tourism businesses that are keen to apply their nature positive commitments across the supply chain in their destinations. Combining ANIMONDIAL expertise with global supplier auditing services!
Will you join us?
Preverisk and ANIMONDIAL would welcome collaboration with a travel business partner to help develop this new Nature Positive auditing service and ensure its utmost practical relevance. If you would be interested in playing a leading part in the creation of this new, ground-breaking service to support our sector, please find out more about our partnership with Preverisk, and partnership with Preverisk so we can tell you all about it. Thank you!
Creating a sustainability plan can be a daunting prospect. With so many ‘sustainability’ measures to consider, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. From ending poverty and single-use plastics, to managing energy consumption and animal interactions, or halting biodiversity loss and carbon emissions, the expectation on tourism businesses to understand and adopt measures to protect ‘people and planet’ can often result in gridlock.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a good place to start, in that they provide clarity on the outputs required to minimise economic, social and environmental risk. However, with most resources displaying the SDGs in numerical order, there is a tendency to select individual Goals without considering their context or recognising the ‘trade-offs’ between them.
The Stockholm Resilience Institute, on the other hand, presents the SDGs as a tiered ‘wedding cake’ (see below). This helpfully illustrates how the economic goals are reliant on the fulfilment of the social goals, which are in turn dependent on the environmental, or biosphere goals (SDGs 6, 13, 14 & 15). This not only demonstrates our reliance on biodiversity and nature for our wellbeing and prosperity but highlights the reasons we must protect it.
One challenge of the SDGs is that they don’t help to define which targets are most relevant for your business and its operational impacts. All too often, we approach sustainability through generic, mainstream actions, rather than considering sector-specific impacts alongside our individual business’ sustainability strategy and which actions are most relevant to achieving it.
Sector-specific guidance provides a clearer understanding of where a business-type has the greatest impact. For instance, the World Travel & Tourism Council’s Nature Positive Travel & Tourism report provides an overall industry perspective, indicating how travel and tourism is both dependent on and impacts nature, together with more specific advice for each sector. The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality advises hotels and hospitality businesses, specifically, how to mitigate their impacts on nature – from freshwater usage and food sourcing to GHG emissions and waste disposal.
The more your sustainability planning focuses on sector-specific and individual business operations, and quantifiable impact, the easier it will be to prioritise, and the more effective your actions will be.
What is clear from the SDG ‘wedding cake’ model is that businesses must prioritise identifying their dependencies and impacts on nature. Fundamentally, nature provides the resources on which tourism, and the communities tourism operates in, all rely, including our food, water, air, and energy. In fact, most of Hospitality’s goods and services rely on nature. Nature can also be harnessed to create solutions to the challenges set out in the SDGs such as preventing disease, reducing carbon emissions, or providing the ability to adapt to climate change – solutions that are positive for social, economic, governance and environmental outcomes. The threat of nature loss is therefore a threat to business, our economies and societies. Preserving and enhancing nature is, after all, one of the underlying principles of sustainability.
To address this, we need to think about which issues are most relevant to our operations and supply chain, and what actions are needed to address them. This should be the starting point for your sustainability strategy, it is the focus of the Alliance’s Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality, and it is exactly the starting point of Nature Positive Tourism.
Nature conservation must be a priority for all businesses, no matter the sector. A Nature Positive approach ensures each business not only identifies and mitigates its specific negative impacts but seeks opportunities to restore and enhance biodiversity. While there will be common themes between businesses, such as reducing plastic use or avoiding deforestation, there will be differences in the range of identified impacts and their severity, and what “regenerative” solutions are available.
We now understand that it is not enough just to consider how we use natural resources; all business efforts must ensure an overall Net Positive impact by conserving and regenerating nature. This can be effectively delivered by understanding the nature around you, investing in nature conservation in your destinations, and seeking opportunities to support and inspire governments, business, and society to help transform humanity’s relationship with the natural world, to become a “Guardian of Nature”.
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (SHA) have established the Nature Positive Tourism Partnership to help transform the sector to meet its obligations under the UN Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and to fulfil its potential as a Guardian of Nature. Find out more and join the initiative.
Learn more:
- Biodiversity Factsheet
- WTTC’s Nature Positive Travel & Tourism Report and Toolbox
- ANIMONDIAL’s NATOUR IMPACT Evaluation Tool to identify your impacts on nature
- Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality
More and more companies in every sector are issuing statements about how eco-friendly they are – but are they really? A 2021 European Commission study found that nearly half of green claims made by businesses online were “exaggerated, false or deceptive”. More than a third used words like “eco-friendly” and “sustainable” without supporting evidence. It isn’t always easy to follow up on good intentions, so how can travel companies ensure that their environmental commitments are more than just words?
“It all started because we were receiving calls from a lot of travel businesses,” explains Helen. “They wanted to do the right thing, but they weren’t sure what guidance to follow”. It’s a familiar story – although businesses want to act, they often lack the tools to do so. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a huge, global company,” she says, “sustainability teams are usually only one or two people. Lack of budget or expertise can be an obstacle as well. It’s a problem. Until now, nature protection has been severely under-resourced.”
Tackling this means finding the right partners, who might be non-profits, universities or biodiversity experts. “Businesses should identify trusted partners to work with,” recommends Helen, “whether it’s a small NGO in a travel destination or a consultant who can help with policy creation or impact assessments. Ultimately, as a travel company, you’re not expected to know everything about every species. So, partner with people who know the area, and perhaps have relevant projects that you can support.”
ANIMONDIAL can help with this, through our Animal Protection Network. As well as a directory of existing members working on different issues around the world, we offer a bespoke service for businesses looking for their ideal match. “To identify the right partner, we start by assessing your business needs and looking at the company’s sustainability focus,” explains Helen. “Nature-related impacts still need to be identified and addressed first. Then we can look at the key issues and opportunities that arise from that to see what sort of partnership makes most sense.”
The benefits of working like this go way beyond having a ‘pet project’ to support. “Historically, when people think about NGO partnerships, they see the non-profit as subordinate, grateful for their support,” Helen says. “They want the logo, but don’t always see the powerful opportunity of the partnership to educate the public or achieve strategic change. It’s actually very much a two-way street: NGO partners can be massively beneficial. They can help with biodiversity monitoring, designing sustainable systems or enriching the customer offer, as well as supporting ESG efforts through nature conservation.”
The closer the partnership is, the more there is to gain – for both parties. It has taken a while, but this message is finally starting to sink in, according to Helen. “More companies recognise it now. They value partners who can talk about the science, and who can really be the experts. It’s powerful.”
ANIMONDIAL has been advocating for the protection of animals and nature through tourism since we were founded in 2018. Last year was a breakthrough. “Everything came together at COP15, in Montréal,” Helen explains. “It was the first time Travel & Tourism was properly represented at these meetings, and we were very proud to be a part of the delegation, headed by the World Travel and Tourism Council and sitting alongside our new Nature Positive Tourism partners – the UN World Tourism Organization and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance.” The message was simple; as Helen puts it: “For years we’ve heard about the dire state our planet is in … this is our last chance to work together to make a difference.”
Jumping in…
- To find out more about ANIMONDIAL’s Animal Protection Network and biodiversity partnership services you can book a free discovery call now!
- Find experience and accommodation suppliers that can help you connect with your destinations through the Tourism Cares Meaningful Travel Map
- Become part of the Nature Positive Tourism movement by signing up to the Vision for Nature Positive Tourism
- To learn how to put Nature Positive Tourism into practice in your business, see the WTTC Nature Positive Travel & Tourism report or consult the wide range of resources in the associated Nature Positive Toolkit.
This is, after all, where many of the negative impacts take place, where endangered species and fragile habitats are most threatened, and where the natural resources on which we all rely are in decline. Society really needs to look beyond its four walls and start to protect their very foundations – grounded in the natural world – sooner rather than later.
I have written a great deal about the importance of NATURE – the very fabric on which all life on Earth is based. The interaction between non-living natural materials, such as soil, water and stone, and all living things, from bacteria to blue whales. You will know that nature is essential to our prosperity and wellbeing, and its demise threatens our existence. In my previous blog, I explained the UN’s new biodiversity protection mandate and the particular obligation on global business to integrate biodiversity safeguards and assess their nature impact. Legal requirements that, as yet, few businesses are fully aware of, let alone preparing to comply with.
Progressive business is beginning to consider nature and, while some companies may just fund tree planting or donate to a conservation NGO, the smart organisation is thinking about its risks and impacts on nature. This includes both direct impacts, like land clearance for construction or agriculture, and indirect impacts through the value chain, from the sourcing and processing of raw materials to the use and disposal of finished products. All this needs to be properly understood before business risk, dependencies and impacts can be identified.
This is where “Nature Positive Business” (the blog) and ANIMONDIAL’s wider work can help. Our expertise encompasses animal protection, nature conservation, sustainable development and social impact. We will ensure your business understands its legal obligations, your business’ relationship with nature, and its impacts, dependencies and risk-factors. Anticipating the task ahead, ANIMONDIAL and our partners have developed the services and tools that T&T businesses need. This includes an evaluation tool for individual companies to assess their impact on nature, a report and Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap with the World Travel & Tourism Council to guide strategy, and a toolkit of additional services to support implementation. Our goal: to support clients through the complexity of biodiversity protection so they can go beyond sustainability to deliver an overall Nature Positive outcome.
As part of our toolkit, ANIMONDIAL has partnered with NatureMetrics, to bring world leading, measurable nature intelligence to the travel & tourism industry. They use cutting-edge technology to generate biodiversity data at scale from environmental DNA (eDNA) – the traces of DNA that all animals leave behind on the ground, in water and even in the air. This provides valuable insight into the wildlife and biodiversity in a given location and enables ongoing monitoring at a fraction of the cost of traditional techniques. The result is easy access to crucial data that underpins good decisions for business and nature. Our partnership not only introduces the benefits of eDNA monitoring to the Travel & Tourism industry, it also provides valuable guidance to help integrate its use into operational programmes that minimise harm and maximise benefits for nature.
Using the eDNA biodiversity data collected, businesses can see the current state of biodiversity in their destinations, even around their offices, enabling them to make practical plans to protect and enhance it through precise, measurable steps. Repeated surveys provide direct feedback on the effectiveness of these efforts, tracking performance and demonstrating concrete progress.
While the obligation to monitor, assess and mitigate impacts falls on all businesses irrespective of their sector, tourism businesses have an added advantage: the means to collected biodiversity data from multiple sites across the globe. This gives us the capability to help society better understand the Earth’s biodiversity health and the ongoing damage and recovery of nature, as well as the ability to monitor the outcomes of Nature Positive actions as they are applied. The eDNA data collected through Nature Metrics is automatically shared with eBioAtlas – a global, open-access database supporting biodiversity protection and restoration activities around the world, to which Travel & Tourism could become a key contributor.
“Every organisation needs to know where it stands, what impacts it currently has and how each of its future decisions can alter that impact in its journey to becoming nature positive.”
— Pippa Howard, Chief Nature Strategist, NatureMetrics
Joint services of NatureMetrics and ANIMONDIAL will help businesses monitor, assess and mitigate operational impact on nature and its biodiversity. All in one package!
Working with the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and partners, ANIMONDIAL will seek to integrate eDNA measurement and monitoring services into the Nature Positive Tourism approach. We want to provide tourism businesses with the tools to understand the nature around them (around their offices, in the destinations they visit and other sites) and the outcomes of their Nature Positive Tourism actions. Techniques like eDNA analysis are only one element of this, but as part of our broad and ever-expanding toolkit they can play a key role in our industry’s Nature Positive journey.
Learn more about Nature Positive Tourism and sign up as a Guardian of Nature
Contact ANIMONDIAL for a Discovery Call to find out how we can help your business
Identify your impact on nature
Learn more about NatureMetrics and biodiversity data collection
This is, after all, where many of the negative impacts take place, where endangered species and fragile habitats are most threatened, and where the natural resources on which we all rely are in decline. Society really needs to look beyond its four walls and start to protect their very foundations – grounded in the natural world – sooner rather than later.
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently called for “action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once”. Hardly surprising considering the alarming state of nature: global biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history (UN CBD), it is now considered the 4th most severe threat we face this decade (WEF, 2023), and levels of global heating, which is driving biodiversity loss, are close to “irreversible” levels (IPCC AR6, 2023).
Despite this urgent need for action, only a small share of companies globally seems to have set targets or be applying actions to protect biodiversity or address habitat loss. A similar trend is observed in a recent survey of tourism businesses – of the few that said Nature Positive actions had been adopted, fewer still confirm action on the ground – where most of the damage is being done.
The UN biodiversity agreement, passed in December 2022, now requires all businesses globally to protect and restore nature: specifically “to progressively reduce negative impacts on biodiversity, increase positive impacts, [and] reduce biodiversity-related risks to business…”. In doing this, an understanding of “their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity” will be essential.
All businesses depend on natural systems either directly or through their supply chains. Research by the World Economic Forum showed that $44 trillion of economic value generation – more than half the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services. For Travel & Tourism, 80% of its goods and services depend on nature. … For us, it ensures our survival.
Nature is essential for those businesses committed to reducing carbon emissions, global warming and achieving Net Zero goals. It is a vital consideration for businesses developing sustainable and resilient approaches towards activities they directly operate and indirectly influence. Nature Positive actions can also be valuable commercial investments and empowerment of local communities.
The finding by S&P Global that only about one-third of Europe’s biggest companies have set biodiversity targets, and even fewer among the largest companies in Asia-Pacific and the US, is certainly disheartening. It demonstrates the need for compelling incentives to enact or better enforce policies and actions to boost biodiversity.
Urgent action is needed to ensure businesses understand their obligations and have the tools to better protect and restore nature.
The recently launched tourism partnership between UN World Tourism Organisation, World Travel & Tourism Council and Sustainable Hospitality Alliance for a Nature Positive Tourism approach, highlights this industry’s commitment to nature protection and also its ability to contribute to positive change in global destinations influencing local and national policymaking and investment.
My colleagues and I, at ANIMONDIAL, have had the pleasure of working with Travel & Tourism to guide the sector to not just mitigate biodiversity loss but to identify nature-related opportunities to boost biodiversity in destinations through private-public partnerships.
There is still a way to go, but a report has been produced, accompanied by a Toolbox of resources, while the Vision for Nature Positive Tourism invites businesses, large and small, to commit to a Nature Positive future – where we can travel in Harmony with Nature.
My hope is that other industries or business sectors will follow this lead and take a proactive role to better protect nature and its biodiversity across the world for the generations to come.
Keen to better protect biodiversity in nature?
Find out your business’ risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity with ANIMONDIAL’s Nature Positive evaluation tool
Measure the biodiversity in any location through eDNA analysis by Nature Metrics to benchmark your Nature Positive actions
Identify Biodiversity Partnerships in global destinations, working with businesses, NGOs and communities to better protect biodiversity and restore nature
Find out how your business sector faired in the S&P Global review of biodiversity-committed business