What does it mean for a tour operator to be “carbon-neutral”? Can a company really be carbon-neutral, or even carbon-positive? Climate change is undoubtedly among the most important challenges facing our world today, and the tourism industry is a major contributor of carbon emissions. What can be done to address this challenge in a practical way? Here are just a few examples of TIES members who incorporate carbon management policies, carbon offset options, and climate-friendly practices into their tour operations, as well as their outreach and education efforts.

In 2009, Intrepid Travel became the first adventure tour operator to announce that we would carbon offset all of the trips that we operate across the globe. This accounts for 80% of our entire trip portfolio (we sell some trips operated by partner tour companies)! As a result, all of our trips operating in 2010 have the cost of carbon offsetting included in the trip cost. This move not only cemented Intrepid’s position as a leader in tackling climate change, but it marked a significant milestone in our journey to become a carbon neutral company.

Costa Rica is a small biologically diverse country in Central America, hosting 6% of all the species of flora and fauna on the planet in an area about the size of West Virginia in the USA. Costa Rica has been the global leader in the areas of conservation and sustainable tourism. Throughout its history, Costa Rica has demonstrated its progressive efforts to promote peace, conserve the environment, and strengthen the cultural identity of the Costa Rican through responsibly managed tourism development.

In 2008, Hotel Mocking Bird Hill made significant steps towards achieving the goals of developing high quality responsible tourism experiences with minimal negative impact. A value-driven company, the hotel has always taken the long term view of the sustainability challenges. When it opened in 1993, the hotel focused on being an earth-friendly hotel, contributing to biodiversity conservation and environmental initiatives. With the new goals of becoming water and carbon neutral, the hotel addresses the critical issue of climate change.

The Galapagos Islands is a region folks love to visit. Managing environmental and infrastructure demands created by upwards of 145,000 visitors a year is front of mind with one visionary travel company. Ecoventura has taken an environmental leadership role to create structure that will ensure that visitors can continue to come here. This family-owned cruise company transports 4,000+ passengers annually aboard a fleet of three expedition vessels, identical, superior first-class 20-passenger yachts with 10 double cabins.

TIES encourages you to reduce your carbon emissions by minimizing energy use, utilizing alternative transportation, and choosing low-impact activities. There will always be unavoidable carbon footprint of your travel. Contribute to a credible carbon offsetting program to support conservation, renewable energy, and other energy saving projects. For those travelling to and within the UK, here are some useful information on measuring the carbon footprint of your travel, and how to travel consciously as you select air travel, local transportation and lodging options.

The Initiative “Peace with Nature”, which gives birth to the National Strategy for Climate Change, and which plans to convert Costa Rica in a C – Neutral country by the year 2021, asks for great changes and reveals big challenges to be overcome. This proposal invites us to redefine and re-invent our creative capacities in order to assume the greatest task human kind has ever faced both as a victimizer and as victim at the same time: to overcome the self imposed threat of climate change and global warming.