Sustainable Travel: Places & Planet

Nature First

Our Nature Positive commitment

Taking a nature-positive approach to all our adventures; putting nature and biodiversity gain through conservation and regeneration at the heart of our decision-making, trip design and work in our destination communities .

Our People, Places & Planet plan works towards improving life through travel – for the places we visit on our adventures, the people we meet when there, and the planet which hosts us. Here, we describe the Places & Planet pillar of our plan.

Our planet faces unprecedented challenges – not only the climate crisis, but biodiversity collapse. The nature and unique ecosystems that we continue to explore on our adventures are vital for the survival of our global society but are left increasingly under threat.

In January 2020, we were one of the first travel companies to declare a climate emergency, and at the beginning of 2021, we made a commitment to our planet – to halve our carbon footprint by 2030, to rewild 100 square metres per passenger, and to compensate for all trip and flight emissions.

Now, we want to take a big step further in our commitment to the natural world, and become Nature Positive by 2024.

What does Nature Positive mean?

Putting nature and biodiversity gain through conservation and regeneration at the heart of our decision making, our trip design and our work in local communities. As a business, we want to ensure that everything we do to create and run our trips not only reduces any negative impacts on natural ecosystems, but proactively seeks to support nature’s restoration and regeneration. Travel still leaves a footprint – through carbon emissions, waste and pollution, and ecosystem exploitation. We seek to remove and reduce these negative impacts, and outweigh them with our efforts to restore nature wherever possible.

How can we become Nature Positive?

Our trips already avoid and reduce some of tourism’s worst impacts on nature – our use of eco-lodges and hotels with smaller environmental footprints, and our stringent animal welfare policy for example. We also contribute towards nature regeneration – with our rewilding commitment and on-trip support of local conservation efforts. We are always looking to significantly expand on these efforts, including some ambitious carbon management, waste reduction and biodiversity restoration goals.

For more information on our Nature Positive plan, click here. Below, we share some key aspects of our Nature Positive commitment.

Our Nature positive commitment

Read more here about how we aim to ensure our adventures give back to nature.

Carbon reduction and management

Read more here on our efforts to measure our carbon and the actions we are taking to manage and reduce it.

Rewilding

Read more here about our commitment to rewild 100 square metres per passenger, and support innovative rewilding efforts.

Building the eBioAtlas

Read more here about our plan to enable travellers to collect samples in support of the IUCN’s global conservation work.

Wildlife and Animal Welfare

Read more here about how we are ensuring the protection of wildlife and working animals across our trips.

Conservation

Read more here about how we are supporting vital conservation work through the Exodus Travels Foundation.

Restoring Italy’s Wild Heart

Restoring Italy’s Wild Heart– a mini-documentary about the people, wildlife and stunning landscapes behind our Nature and Carbon Corridors Project in the Apennines.

Our Foundation enables us to extend our vision of harnessing the positive power of travel for the people and places we visit. Thanks to the generosity of our clients and partners, we support many community-based projects in hard-to-reach destinations. Read more about our Foundation’s work here.

We reached out to our team, clients and partners on the ground to understand which areas of social and environmental impact Exodus Adventure Travels should prioritise. Consequently, our People, Places & Planet plan focuses on the following six UN Sustainable Development Goals:

Goal 8 – Decent work and economic growth

Goal 11 – Sustainable cities and communities

Goal 12 – Responsible consumption and production

Goal 13 – Climate action

Goal 14 – Life below water

Goal 15 – Life on land

Find out more about our plan here.