Adrian Ferraro, Director at the STC, recently wrote to the Young Explorers' Trust in response to an article in their newsletter on "Carbon Offsetting or Environmental Awareness?" amongst youth and school expeditions. We're delighted that his reply was published in the latest edition of the YET News. Adrian's letter is below. It's a subject Adrian is particularly passionate about, so please feel free to get in touch if you'd like to contribute to this debate. Alternatively, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this post.
"Dear Mark, Thanks for your piece in the latest YET news regarding Carbon Offsetting. Some interesting questions are posed. You asked for a few thoughts. I entirely agree with you on your musings that an expedition's educational benefits "ought to yield greater and more lasting impacts on carbon footprints for entire lifetimes". However, is that an excuse not to do all we can right now?
I disagree that youth expeditions should be classed any differently from independent travel or university research trips or other expeditions when considering whether to offset or not. Yes, they are educational, but this is not unique to youth expeditions. ALL independent travel, research expeditions, and adventures are educational, whatever the age of the participant. This is just as much the case with adventure holidays from responsible tour operators too.
On the sentence I highlighted above, the key word is "ought". Whether it does create lasting impact or not depends very much on how the trip is run. The "greenness" of an expedition and the learning outcomes associated with that expedition are not just restricted to the environment, it's also about the cultural and economic issues. An expedition could be completely carbon neutral and environmentally on the button, yet cause far more long term problems in the destination than 12 pupils' newly found environmental awareness will ever "solve" in their life time.
Responsible Tourism
Paying for carbon offsetting does not automatically discourage people to do push other environmental concerns to the back ground. What is needed is a culture within the expedition to enlighten the students on a much wider issue - that of responsible tourism. Not just environmentally responsible tourism, but also ethically and culturally responsible tourism. The two need to go hand in hand. The sad thing is, it is not hard to find some shocking examples of some school expedition companies disregard for responsible tourism. Indeed, some expedition providers seem to think that RT is about having a green office or recycling paper. Many don't even deem it important enough to mention on their website.
Ethical Expeditions
In my view, issues such as fair pay for local staff, employing locally qualified expedition leaders where they are suitable, porter protection, ethically sourced projects and many other issues are farmore important to get right than offsetting emissions. Get these right, and the expedition experience WILL create a long lasting understanding of the issues and problems faced by our world. Get them wrong, and the young people will come away from the experience with a completely mis-guided view of what is an acceptable way to travel in the developing world. What a crime and opportunity missed that would be. Youth expeditions are the perfect opportunity to instill in a new generation a responsible approach to travel. In my experience, the expedition community has not given the priority to this that it should have done. The YET expedition environmental awareness publication is excellent in many ways, but even this lacks detailed guidance on Porter Protection issues such as fair pay, insurance, health care, food and shelter. With the sheer number of expeditions departing these days, expedition companies have a responsibility to work with their local operators for the long term and pressure them to look after their employees. The Expedition Providers Association Code of conduct, which as you know is the basis for the LOTC Quality badge, has no minimum specification for Porter Protection, cultural awareness, responsible tourism or anything similar. If this is the "standard" to which expedition companies should aspire, then it leaves a lot to be desired.
If this is the "standard" to which expedition companies should aspire, then it leaves a lot to be desired.
Responsible Tourism should be the basis from which all expeditions are started. VERY few school expeditions are visiting areas that are not already visited in a tourism capacity by adventure travel and trekking companies, and I believe that many in the expedition community could learn a lot from the leading adventure companies in how to travel responsibly. I agree with you that it is a far from straight forward issue, but as indicated above, I believe offsetting is just one part of a much wider issue. Regardless of the pros and cons of offsetting, if the decision is eventually made to do so then companies and schools need to think and research very carefully as to where and with whom they 'spend' their offset donations. There are many companies out there that make a HUGE profit out of carbon offsetting, whilst giving comparatively little into the projects that actually reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere.
In summary, I would say that offsetting is a good thing if gone about in the right way, but only if there is an underlying ethos on an expedition of responsible travel and respect for the destination cultures, people and environment. Responsible Tourism and Carbon offsetting go very well together, but if I had to choose between the two, responsible tourism would win every time, as that IS what installs long lasting legacies. If you want to discuss at all then please feel free to give me a call. Thanks for starting the debate."
Adrian Ferraro Director, The Specialist Travel Consultancy Ltd