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Innovations in Conservation Tourism: Pioneering a Greener Future

Written by Sam Lynch on September 5, 2023. Posted in Blog, Uncategorized.

The world is teeming with natural wonders that we must preserve for the benefit of life as we know it. In the post-lockdown world, an increasing number of tourists have planned travel to contribute toward a greener future. We have developed a stronger appreciation and yearning for destinations offering unfamiliar environmental opportunities. The ominous warning signs of climate change have accelerated our desire for ”last chance tourism,” driving us to observe animals and landscapes in danger–and to do our part to protect those ecosystems.

Conservation tourism emerged from the 1950s conservation movement, originally aimed at protecting “nature from people.” However, the definition of conservation has evolved to focus on enabling all life to thrive rather than solely preserving nature from human influence. Conservation tourism can generally be divided into three pillars: 1) wildlife conservation, 2) environmental conservation, and 3) cultural conservation. Wildlife conservation centers on travel to see specific species in their natural habitats. Cultural conservation focuses on heritage sites, and environmental conservation deals with national parks or landscapes. Above all, these tourists travel with the desire to conserve and regenerate natural resources. An analogous term is ecotourism, defined by the International Ecotourism Society as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the welfare of local people.” The ecotourism umbrella includes researchers, birders, safari-goers, hikers, and anyone wanting to travel to see nature conscientiously.

Due to demand, organizations, governments, and businesses have responded with trailblazing innovations in conservation tourism in recent years. The European Commission will announce the winners for “European Capital of Smart Tourism 2024” and “European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism 2024” in November-December 2023. The former, aimed at larger cities, was created recently in 2019. The latter was launched just this May and geared toward smaller market destinations. Both incentivize European cities to build and maintain their attractions, pioneering innovations in conservation tourism with a greener future in mind.

Pioneering Technological Solutions in Conservation Tourism

Technology and artificial intelligence are advancing rapidly in all facets of the industry, and tourism is no different. Cruise lines and airlines are pushing toward carbon neutrality and negativity. Artificial intelligence generates visitor data and helps travelers choose the cheapest and most eco-friendly modes of transportation.

1. Zero Emissions and Regenerative Tourism

On the customer’s end, websites like Google Flights can indicate flights with fewer emissions and sort through thousands of data points to find the cheapest available flights. This makes destinations slightly easier for tourists to access and harms the environment less. Ecolodges, accommodations that are generally more environmentally friendly (built with local materials, emit less carbon, source local food, have policies in place to reduce waste, etc.), have multiplied recently in well-known ecotourism hotspots such as Costa Rica, Bali, and Ecuador.

Even beyond striving to reduce or curtail emissions entirely, a new term called “regenerative tourism” has emerged in recent years. The regenerative tourist uses their vacation to revitalize and grow the environment they are staying in, including the local population, and participate in projects that better their lives. This is a step beyond sustainable tourism; it is the most beneficial extreme. Liberia’s Kokon Ecolodge, which opened in April 2023, is 100% solar-powered and designed to waste as little energy as possible. In addition, guests have the opportunity to participate in sea turtle population surveys, and the meals and employees of the lodge are all local. All of these details are designed to regenerate Liberia’s environment and economy. These days, travelers who want to “leave no trace” on the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface are getting more options.

2. Cruise Lines and Airlines

Hurtigruten Group, a Norwegian cruise line, unveiled a ship in 2019 that cut carbon emissions by 20 percent. This year, it has spent 100 million dollars on green upgrades to its ships that will cut more emissions. Air New Zealand is electrifying some of its planes. Turkish Airlines has made waves by pioneering a method to grow carbon-negative jet fuel from microalgae plants.

Carbon neutral cruise ship in Norway, an innovation in conservation tourism — As seen from a Hurtigruten cruise ship, the midnight sun illuminates the Norwegian coastline in a haunting glow. In the near future, this journey may be carbon neutral. Photo by Jacek Ulinski on Unsplash.

However, it is also important to remember that even with these initiatives, cruises, and airlines are some of the most detrimental forms of travel to the environment. Much of the airline/cruise industry’s new “carbon neutrality” is created by carbon offsets instead of making any meaningful reduction in carbon emissions. Instead of tackling the root of the problem, they develop new technology to mitigate its impact. A small minority are rolling out carbon-negative initiatives in truth, and even then, this perpetuates the notion that all we need to do to consume is to conserve. It prevents us from entirely rethinking our approach to conservation tourism and focusing on a model that benefits all.

Including Local Stakeholders in Conservation Tourism

Regenerative, sustainable tourism must include the environment but is not only geared toward helping the environment. One of the critical innovations in conservation tourism has been recognizing the value of invested local stakeholders. To preserve the integrity of a destination, one cannot simply prescribe a solution from the outside. To truly understand the needs of a place and those that live there, one must live for years in that place and face all of the challenges presented by coexisting with nature. These immediate challenges can obscure the greater good of long-term impact.

A Bengal Tiger in India. Innovations in conservation tourism have led local stakeholders to prioritize protecting them — A Bengal Tiger roams in India’s Kanha Kisli National Park. Bengal Tigers are the national animal of both India and Bangladesh and a major ecotourism draw. Photo by Vincent Van Zalinge on Unsplash.

For example, in countries with essential populations of big cats like lions and tigers, local livestock herders kill them because they perceive them as a threat to their most fruitful source of income. However, when unsustainable tourism, such as game hunting, enters the area, the natural populations of these wild beasts suffer, and so do the locals. To address this conundrum, one solution may be to encourage eco-tourism in which new businesses extend invitations seeking local involvement. While the locals no longer kill the big cats, their involvement in the solution allows them to benefit even more greatly from the predators running free than from preventing damages they might cause.

Solimar International has been at the forefront of this innovation, pioneering community-based solutions in countries worldwide. Solimar worked with the Friends of Wallacea and the Guyana Tourism Authority to market their tours to intrepid ecotourists searching for adventure. Indigenous groups, such as the Warapoka people, organize these experiences to become self-sufficient in tourism as a critical income generator.

Local Stakeholders and Birding Tourism

Innovations in birding tourism allow locals to benefit when tourists spot a Scarlet Ibis — The scarlet ibis, a prized target of Central and South American birding tours. International birding tours are becoming integral to ecotourism in biodiverse, tropical regions as remote destination development grows and bird populations decline. Photo by Jaime Spaniol on Unsplash.

International birding tourism can be as impermanent as the birds themselves. Bird species are in decline around the world. Without local enterprises or scientific resources, the communities around remote areas where rare birds reside have no incentive to study and preserve them. Parallelling other recent innovations in locally-driven tourism, the Audubon Society and the American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund have started an initiative supporting birding-focused guides and businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean. Piloting in 2017 in the Bahamas, Belize, Guatemala, and Paraguay, it analyzed where low-income areas and Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) overlapped. The results have been encouraging so far. It has now expanded to other countries in the Americas, including Colombia, the country with the most bird species worldwide.

Uplifting Less Commonly Visited Places

Another favorable recent innovation in conservation tourism has been the uplifting of less commonly visited places as ecological hotspots. This has always been a priority, but increased online resources and visibility inspire visitors to get more off the beaten path. With a strategic marketing plan driven by local stakeholders, locations previously starved of tourism can make a name for themselves as protectors of environments unlike any other.

Solimar International has pioneered this approach, helping destinations get on their feet and establishing the foundation for sustainable conservation projects. In Tanzania, the northern parks receive the most visitors, so Solimar worked with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism in 2020 to entice them to the southern circuit of protected areas. Solimar is currently facilitating conservation tourism projects in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, the world’s largest mangrove forest and critical terrestrial and aquatic life habitat. Solimar is collaborating with USAID and local communities in Liberia to develop and market its ecotourism industry.

DMO Development

Less commonly visited places, with good experience development and marketing, can begin to receive a steady flow of tourists and become more commonly visited. This is where Solimar International’s DMO development solution comes in. According to Solimar, the function of a DMO (Destination Management/Marketing Organization) is to manage tourism in a specific area in a collaborative way that promotes long-term sustainability. The presence of a centralized organization dedicated to tourism from within a community is crucial. From start to finish, it allows local stakeholders to have an important say in how their destination develops and builds a brand identity that complements their values. Destination Dahar in Southern Tunisia, ATKOMA in Ataúro Island, Timor-Leste, and Sugar River Region in New Hampshire exemplify this philosophy in action.

Elephant Falls Gola Liberia — Elephant Falls thunders in Liberia’s Gola Rainforest National Park, an expanse of pristine deciduous and evergreen forest it shares with its neighbor, Sierra Leone. Learn more about Solimar International’s Liberia Conservation Works project here.

Conservation Tourism is an increasingly important element of sustainable tourism approaches in actively contributing to biodiversity conservation, protection, and restoration. Although it has been around for decades, a perfect storm of leaps in technology, eagerness to travel, and concern for the environment have it flourishing before our eyes. We at Solimar International are proud to advance as a company and fulfill our mission of connecting cultures and driving global economic growth through supporting innovations in conservation tourism in the areas that need them most.

Want to learn more about the conservation tourism projects Solimar is currently working on to pioneer solutions for a greener future? Read more here!

Tourist in sunglasses sits on a boat in Thailand surrounded by trees and nature

How Can Tourism Be Regenerative?

Written by Chloe King on March 1, 2022. Posted in Blog, Uncategorized.

Last year, Solimar International’s Director of Conservation & Community Development, Chloe King, conducted a first-of-its-kind study of 30 tourism operators around the world. These tourism businesses—ranging from Destination Management Organizations to community-based homestay networks to high-end eco-lodges—were assessed via in-depth interviews and surveys to understand how centering nature within their business models enabled them to shift from “sustainable” to “regenerative” tourism practices. Led alongside researchers at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, this study did not seek to define what regenerative tourism is, but rather how tourism can be more regenerative by embracing nature as the solution. While “regenerative tourism” seems to be the latest buzzword in the industry, this study sought to ground our aspirations as an industry with practical examples from around the world.

Realigning Our Values with People and Nature

In 2022, our society—and the tourism industry embedded within it—is at a crossroads. The COVID-19 pandemic, once expected to bring about a sweeping “green” transformation of our economy, has failed to catalyze this transition, while further deepening inequality across the globe. As vaccine access remains unevenly distributed across the world, travelers from the Global North feel secure in their ability to travel to the Global South for a vacation, assured in the fact that their visits bring economic opportunities to those who may otherwise lack them. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions worldwide—following a temporary steep drop in 2020—have rebounded, alongside the tourism industry that contributes an estimated 8% of global emissions each year.

Tourism is both a place-based and global industry: it has hyper-local impacts (providing job opportunities to local people) with global ramifications (contributing to climate breakdown that limits the ability of the same communities to adapt and secure a just future). In a stark illustration of this juxtaposition, a recent study found that each Antarctic tourist effectively responsible for melting 83 tonnes of snow. For too long, we have justified these impacts through the economic benefits that the tourism industry brings, once responsible for employing 1 in 10 people globally.

Two elephants crossing a road in a safari park — Less than .5% of the total annual tourism turnover is needed to fund a global network of protected areas. However, emissions from tourism significantly contribute to climate change impacts in the same destinations.

Tourism must begin to fundamentally realign itself with the people and nature it claims to serve, to both rectify the impact it has on our global climate while driving more than just economic gains in the destinations in which it operates. Tourism is more than just money: it can be an opportunity to protect nature and demonstrate its intrinsic value; it can bring people together towards a common vision, such as through the establishment of a DMO; it can build social bonds, bridge cultures, and raise awareness; and it can bring greater agency to local communities, to bring the life they aspire for into existence.

Regenerative tourism has the potential to transform how we value the act of tourism in itself, beginning a shift from a “visitor economy” to a “resident economy”, where the needs and values of local people are placed above that of temporary visitors. Regenerative tourism seeks to place greater value on nature and human well-being than growth and profit through a whole-of-the-system, place-based, community-led, and environment-centered approach. These regenerative practices can also help to reconcile tourism’s impact on climate with its positive impact on place, by both increasing industry responsibility for reducing emissions while helping communities adapt to climate change impacts that are already underway.

The research we conducted, through in-depth interviews with 30 tourism operators around the globe, shows how this shift is possible.

Embracing Nature in the Regenerative Shift

A regenerative shift across all sectors of our modern economy—from construction to agriculture to transport—will be essential to addressing both climate breakdown and the destruction of wildlife across the globe. This past decade saw the hottest temperatures on record as more species of plants and animals were threatened with extinction than any other time in human history. The research is clear that from ocean to alpine forest—our global ecosystems that collectively absorb 56% of all human emissions each year—we cannot address climate change without protecting and restoring nature.

Nature-based solutions—defined as actions that protect, sustainably manage, or restore ecosystems to provide both biodiversity and human well-being benefits—will contribute a significant portion of total emission mitigation needed over the coming years (estimated at 5 to 11.7 GtCO2e per year by 2030). This must happen alongside deep and far-reaching decarbonization of industries like tourism. But the nature-based solutions utilized by the tourism industry do so much more than just absorb emissions from the atmosphere: they can help communities adapt to climate change, like mangrove forests protecting against storm surges; they can diversify business revenue and enhance destination resilience against crises like COVID-19; and they can protect the intrinsic or cultural values of nature that go beyond attempts at economic valuation, such as the traditional significance of a forest or the beauty of whale song.

humpback whale jumping with a nature reserve in the background — When we value both nature and tourism only in economic terms, we bury things that money cannot measure, such as intrinsic or cultural values that destinations carry.

By embracing nature in the regenerative shift, tourism can begin to center local communities and ecosystems in its response to global challenges like climate change. This will require deep and far-ranging discussions with local stakeholders to engage in conversation around what to protect, restore, and let go of as they strive towards a common and just future. Whether using tourism revenue to restore 200,000 hectares of once pristine wilderness or using tourists themselves as citizen scientists to monitor a small path of coral reef near a resort, centering nature will be key to the regenerative shift in actively improving destinations, rather than just sustaining them.

As the economist and Harvard University professor David Korten wrote:

“The only valid purpose of an economy is to serve life. To align the human economy with this purpose, we must learn to live as nature lives, organize as nature organizes, and learn as nature learns guided by reality-based, life-centered, intellectually-sound economics.”

Regenerative Tourism: Seeking Net Positive Impact on Destinations

By quantifying tourism only through its economic impact, we obscure other aspects that money cannot measure, from vibrant intercultural exchanges and friendships to the nature of collaborative partnerships capable of protecting vast ecosystems. The Regenerative Tourism Framework born from this research process seeks to provide a guide for tourism destinations that wish to measure the impact we must begin to achieve, as the planet warms and wildlife is lost at an alarming rate. Each of the Five Principles, which will be expanded upon in an upcoming white paper publication, are inspired by nature-based solutions and seek to guide tourism practitioners in the regenerative shift. The principles echo other research in this space, underscoring that tourism can no longer be “done” to local communities; it must be done “with and for” them.

Regenerative tourism framework with five principles for tourism practitioners, surrounded by the UN Sustainable Development Goal symbols — The Regenerative Tourism Framework, born from an academic study conducted by Chloe King at Solimar International, aims to guide tourism practitioners in their regenerative journey.

In asking how tourism can be regenerative, we are not arguing that tourism practitioners forgo all attempts at sustainability; efforts that reduce negative impacts, such as transitioning to renewable energy, reducing food waste, or recycling products will be essential in achieving the transition we need. Instead, a regenerative mindset requires simply asking the question: When I travel, or when I receive travelers, what can I do to make sure I have a net positive impact on nature and people in the destination?

Simply sustaining our current system will not be enough to address the scale of all that could be lost if we fail to act quickly. Tourism is capable of doing so much more than just providing economic benefits to a destination, and in fact measuring the other ways it positively contributes to place will be essential in building a more resilient and diversified industry. Regenerative tourism asks us to take a step back and see the bigger picture, and the ways in which the health of communities, nature, business, and visitors intertwine.

The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that many facets of the modern economy—interconnected borders, international travel, the office workspace—are not permanent features. With crisis comes an opportunity to reimagine tourism as what it can—and must—become.

If you are interested in reading our upcoming publication with the results from this research, including guidelines and examples of the Five Principles within the Regenerative Tourism Framework for tourism practitioners and destinations, please add your email to an announcement list here. A second blog will also later be published summarizing this report.

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Tag: local stakeholders