By Shams Uddin, Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism (CAMAT)

Booni is a village 80 kilometers to the north of Chitral town. Just like the rest of the villages in the Hindu Kush region, Booni is a fan-shaped landmass formed by glacial deposit at the mouth of what is called ‘Booni Gol’ or the stream of Booni, which cultivates the tracts of crops, vegetables, fruit bearing apple, pear and grape trees, and so on. On the afternoon of July 26th, 2010, a huge flash flood that originated from Booni Zom glacier smashed road networks, telephone and water supply lines, depriving the local communities of the basic life amenities.

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.

In 2009 Wayne Sentman initiated a novel CO2 offset program for the San Francisco based non-profit marine conservation organization, Oceanic Society. Wayne worked to form a partnership between Oceanic Society, a Boston Public School (Warren Prescott School), and a Harvard University, graduate student founded education non-profit, Quen.ch.

By Shams Uddin, Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism (CAMAT) – A vigil rally was organized in Booni, northern Chitral, Pakistan, as part of the global “Vigil For Survival” movement calling for a strong climate treaty in Copenhagen. Standing in solemn solidarity with the citizens of the nations whose very survival is threatened by the climate crisis, thousands of rallies and candlelight vigils were held around the world on December 12th and 13th, 2009. (Source: 350.org)

The Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism (CAMAT) celebrated the International Day of Climate Action on Oct 24th, 2009 in the Kalash Valley region (Rumbor, Chitral District, Pakistan) promoting actions with the motto “think globally, act locally.” The theme of the day was “The Impacts of Global Warming on the Kalash Communities,” and the CAMAT’s October 24th events gathered together local environmental groups, students, community leaders and women’s groups.

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.

The current economic situation and its impact on the industry was “the hot topic” at the 2009 Annual Cruise Shipping Convention in Miami, though discussions on the impact cruise tourism has on the environment “was not covered enough,” reports this article by Vacation and Cruising. Fuel consumption by cruise ships, which includes energy use for laundry, restaurants, leisure club activities, water and waste treatment, can, according to a 2008 study, be nearly three times those of the new Airbus A380.

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.

Let’s suppose that because of measures to mitigate climate change, eg carbon taxes or trading systems or whatever, travel gets much more expensive. Let’s say it gets twice as expensive as it is now, relative to your income – i.e., if you were to continue travelling as much as you do now, it would use up twice the proportion of your total income as it does now. (We’ve had a bit of experience of this recently, though unrelated to climate change, with oil price increases..).