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How can your business adopt a Nature Positive Tourism approach?

Together we can make animal- and nature-friendly tourism part of the solution to meet the global challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change. The expectations placed on businesses are changing fast, and in Travel & Tourism in particular there are many new demands and opportunities.

ANIMONDIAL can help you navigate the complexities and take positive action for nature. We support Travel & Tourism businesses at every stage of their Nature Positive Tourism journey. We inform, inspire, and empower travel professionals to review their operations and activities, minimise negative impact, and optimise opportunities to better protect animals and restore biodiversity.


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What is Nature Positive Tourism?

The concept of ‘nature positive’ isn’t something new. The idea of protecting natural spaces, wild species and individual animals is something most of us are very familiar with. ‘Nature positive’ is just another way of looking at this.

Drawing on the ‘net zero’ model used for managing greenhouse gas emissions, Nature Positive Tourism is a sector-specific approach which emphasises the balance between ongoing negative and positive impacts. The key point is that our efforts to restore what is lost and enhance what remains in the natural world must outweigh any damage that we continue to make.

We can aim to do no harm, but we have to accept that this is very difficult for many human activities. However, if we continue to cause widespread damage and make only modest efforts to repair and replace, we may only slow the ongoing loss of biodiversity and natural systems but we will not turn it around. In order to reverse the damage we have done over the past decades, centuries and millennia, we have to make sure that the balance shifts in favour of nature. The Nature Positive Tourism approach is about understanding how much harm we are causing and how much benefit we are creating, to ensure that the good outweighs the bad – that the sum total of our activities is a net-positive effect on nature.

Our Goal at ANIMONIDAL is to help Travel & Tourism businesses embed the Nature Positive Tourism approach into their operations, supply chain and destination activities. We do this in a way that manages and mitigates risks and helps to leverage further positive action. 

Why is a Nature Positive Tourism approach vital for Travel & Tourism?

The COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis and global decline in biodiversity have raised awareness of the universal importance of environmental sustainability. Protecting nature provides a natural barrier against zoonotic disease, helps us limit and adapt to climate change and secures countless ecosystem services on which businesses and the whole of society relies. Animals and plants, as well as micro-organisms, are the building blocks of ecosystems, emphasising the importance of their protection.

A biodiverse environment is directly relatable to the competitiveness of the tourism sector, while also protecting the destinations we love. The Economist Intelligence Unit has found that millions of people are concerned about the loss of animal and plant species, including over 90% of people in Brazil, the EU and India, and around 85% in the USA and Sub-Saharan Africa. As explained in the WTTC/ANIMONDIAL 2022 Report ‘Towards Nature Positive Travel & Tourism’, Travel & Tourism is implicated in all five drivers of biodiversity loss, but also has amazing potential to support efforts to benefit biodiversity. For individual companies, a commitment to Nature Positive Tourism can attract socially conscious staff, enhance investment opportunities and help define an aspirational brand.

ANIMONDIAL provides the means for tourism businesses to better protect animals and nature, inspire consumer trust, improve competitiveness and drive sustainable, regenerative change.

How we can guide you on your Nature Positive Tourism journey?

ANIMONDIAL’s individually tailored services are designed to help Travel & Tourism businesses of any size incorporate a Nature Positive Tourism approach. We can guide you through all the stages of the Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap, presented in the WTTC and ANIMONDIAL Report ‘Towards Nature Positive Travel & Tourism’.

The Roadmap starts with Assessing your impacts and dependencies on nature and Defining your goals and commitment. This leads into taking decisive actions to Reduce the impacts of your activities and to Restore nature. We can also support you as you Monitor the implementation of your plans and Report on your progress. Throughout the process we help businesses to Collaborate with like-minded organisations, groups and communities as well as to Communicate their commitments and actions internally and externally.

This Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap sets out a straightforward and comprehensive approach for integrating Nature Positive actions throughout your business. We are here to support you at every stage, both through our own in-house expertise and by connecting you with other specialist services.

ANIMONDIAL is here to help you identify tangible actions that are right for your business.


Follow our Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap with services that help you to…

1. Assess & Define

  • Create or update your Policy Statement to express the importance of animal and nature protection and to define business objectives in both operations and offerings.
  • Identify your business impacts on animals and nature through our evaluation tool “NATOUR IMPACT.”
  • Establish Product Selection Guidelines based on expert guidance combined with industry standards, to establish criteria to suit your brand and support your purchasing team.
  • Produce Supplier Support Guidelines to ensure alignment with your animal and nature protection goals.
  • Develop your Nature Positive Strategy, defining objectives, targets, priorities and KPIs to fulfil your policy objectives.

2. Reduce & Restore

  • Review current products and tours from a nature protection and animal welfare perspective to identify high risk activities and opportunities to add value.
  • Identify positive product opportunities to enhance nature while enhancing your portfolio.
  • Find local restoration partners and NGOs, through our Animal Protection Network, to collaborate with on nature protection projects, monitoring activities, customer experiences and much more.
  • Audit your suppliers against animal welfare and Nature Positive Tourism good practice standards through a specialist auditing service.

3. Monitor & Report

  • Review your monitoring activities to ensure relevant and realistic use of KPIs, optimal data collection processes and accurate interpretation of results.
  • Establish your reporting process with a clear procedure for regular evaluations, internal review and a standardised reporting format.

4. Collaborate & Communicate

  • Train your team to introduce your policy, support strategy implementation or promote and maintain employee engagement.
  • Hold a 2-hour workshop for up to 15 key team members to present your approach, gather input and help define actions.
  • Provide practical, department-specific support with consultancy services tailored to product procurement, sales & customer services, in-destination operations, communications and other functions.
  • Produce an organisational Communications Guide to including key messaging, core content, position statements, responses to PR challenges and much more.
  • Identify collaborative opportunity to combine expertise and influence meaningful change.
  • Frame your initiatives in an investor-friendly ESG format to underpin your business case and attract more financial support.

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