Before the recent United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, the World Travel and Tourism Council, a nonprofit organization of travel businesses, issued a report on “nature positive travel,” a new term that describes travel that supports and protects nature.
Julia Simpson, the president and chief executive of the W.T.T.C., called the report “a big shout-out for nature.”
Alarmingly, the report notes that one in four species worldwide faces the threat of extinction (as assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature), and that species abundance, the number of individuals of each species in a particular location, has fallen 68 percent since 1970, according to the World Wildlife Fund. To combat these declines, the report, which has been endorsed by the Secretariat of the U.N. Biodiversity Conference and the World Commission on Protected Areas, offers recommendations that include raising awareness of the importance of biodiversity among travelers; auditing travel companies and those that supply them for their impact on nature; collaborating with local communities as guardians of nature; and investing in species protection and habitat reconstruction.
While the W.T.T.C. has already published a road map to net-zero carbon emissions for the travel industry by 2050, Ms. Simpson calls nature positive tourism “a practical guide for our industry” to protect nature and encourage biodiversity while awaiting more powerful solutions to decarbonize travel, particularly aviation.
How to Travel the World While Putting Nature First
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