As images of the smoking Amazon are replaced by Australia in flames, it's clear that we're in the middle of a climate and biodiversity emergency. Any travel company, whatever their ethos, is heavily implicated. The industry needs a bold, unified and immediate response.

That's why Much Better Adventures have declared a Climate Emergency, and set up Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency to encourage their peers, competitors and partners in the travel industry to do the same. Today (January 14th), dozens of other committed and forward thinking travel businesses will also be declaring an emergency.

Over the course of 2020 Tourism Declares aims to encourage and enable as many travel businesses, organisations and individuals as possible to declare a climate emergency, then develop and publish their action plans.

By declaring an emergency, travel companies are publicly committing to the following 5 actions:

1. Develop a Climate Emergency Plan
Adopted by their Executive board within 12 months of the initial declaration, or sooner.

2. Share this commitment and progress publicly
Share their initial public declaration, their Climate Emergency Plan, and update on progress against their targets each year.

3. Cut carbon emissions
Accept current IPCC advice stating the need to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 in order to keep the planet within 1.5 degrees of warming. Ensure their Climate Emergency Plan represents actions designed to achieve this as a minimum; through delivering transparent, measurable and increasing reductions in the total carbon emissions per customer arising from their operations and the travel services sold by them.

4. Work together
Encourage suppliers and partners to make the same declaration; share best practice amongst peers; and actively participate in the Tourism Declares community.

5. Advocate for change
Recognise the need for system change across the industry, and call for urgent regulatory action to accelerate the transition towards zero carbon air travel.

Full details of the Climate Emergency Declaration here: https://www.tourismdeclares.com/

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“As a travel company reliant on customers flying round the world, we recognise that by even publishing this declaration we are opening ourselves up to accusations of greenwashing,” says Much Better Adventures founder Alex Narracott.

“By nature our adventure travel style is relatively low carbon - think hiking, kayaking and camping compared to luxury hotels and bus tours. Early indications from our soon-to-be-released carbon footprint analysis point to this. But if traveller numbers continue to increase as forecasts suggest (few would argue otherwise), it's our responsibility to engage with the challenges we face head on, and encourage others to do likewise.

We'll do everything we can to cut the carbon emissions we have any say over, encourage others to do likewise, and campaign for the wider system changes needed to move travel and aviation especially towards a low carbon future. As we go, we'll transparently share our progress and our learnings in the hope others will learn from our mistakes. We'll talk openly and invite criticism. Only by doing so do we have a chance of getting to our goal, not just as a company, but as a society”.

Much Better Adventures have already published their 2020 Climate Emergency Plan, which you can see and follow in full here: https://www.muchbetteradventures.com/about/sustainability/climate-crisis/

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For more information on this press release, image or interview requests please contact: hannah@allconditionsmedia.com // +44 773 205 5158

About Much Better Adventures:

Much Better Adventures was founded with the goal of building a travel company that could play a significant role in the fight to protect the world's wild places, and to use the power of properly managed tourism as a powerful tool for conservation and sustainable development.

Serving over 30,000 travellers, Much Better Adventures are run exclusively by local independent businesses, creating sustainable economies in rural areas. They divert 5% of revenues (not profits) into a conservation fund supporting projects chosen for their potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere and tackle the biodiversity crisis.

muchbetteradventures.com