MAKING TRAVEL A FORCE FOR GOOD: AMPLIFY
SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL WRITER NINA KARNIKOWSKI ON MAKING TRAVEL A FORCE FOR GOOD.
I was on top of the mountain, sweaty and breathless and giddy with awe at the Warrumbungles rock formations rising up before me like giant’s fingers, when it hit me. Maybe I didn’t need to search the globe for wonder. Maybe I didn’t need to burn tonnes of carbon in order to be astonished. Maybe I could be as moved by the natural wonders in my own backyard, as I could by the emptiness of the Namib Desert or the lush Sri Lankan highlands.
The realisation was comforting for me, an insatiable traveller who had spent the past eight years criss-crossing the planet writing stories about destinations as far-flung as Antarctica, Ethiopia and Peru. Because by the time I was standing in that spectacular spot in southwestern NSW, Covid-19 had gripped the world, closing borders, grounding airlines and forcing us all to stay home.
During lockdown, I missed the world with an almost suffocating intensity. I missed exploring chaotic Indian markets, missed racing across African plains in a safari truck, missed hiking up active Guatemalan volcanoes. I even missed sleeping on airport floors. I definitely missed the income from my travel writing. But while I mourned the Before, I also read that global carbon emissions were dropping to the lowest level in a decade, and became increasingly aware that the Before was broken.
The travel industry, I discovered during that introspective time, is responsible for an estimated eight percent of the world’s carbon emissions, as well as overtouristed towns, the degradation of local cultures and destruction of natural habitats. At the same time, it is a lifeline, providing one in ten jobs worldwide and broadening the world views of those lucky enough to be able to travel (only six percent of the world’s population has ever flown). When done right, travel can empower communities, support local businesses and conserve wilderness areas. And luckily, there are plenty of things we can all do to travel in a much cleaner and more conscious way. Becoming not only sustainable but regenerative travellers, going further than just doing less damage to the places and people we visit, to actively improving them and making travel a force for good.
I write this as someone who has made all the mistakes. Aside from the enormous amounts of carbon I have burned for my work over the years, I have also unknowingly contributed to animal cruelty by riding elephants in Nepal and visiting the Great Moscow Circus in Russia, and have contributed to overtourism in cities bursting at the seams like Barcelona, Dubrovnik and Paris. I once took three back-to-back flights from Sydney to Newfoundland in Canada just to do a five-day trek, burning more than five tonnes of carbon to get there. Luckily every day is an opportunity to begin again, to pick up another piece of the rubble that the pandemic has left behind and start rebuilding our world.
The first step I plan to take is simple: to travel less, and closer to home. Instead of taking ten international assignments each year and burning upwards of 20 tonnes of carbon (the average Australian or American produces five annually) on travel, I plan to take two or three, supplementing the remainder with domestic trips around our fascinating country, which I have ignored for far too long. By travelling less and more slowly, we’ll likely inject more money into local businesses as we experience life as a resident, which is ultimately what makes travel so interesting.
I read a gruesome fact in David Wallace-Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth recently: that every plane seat from New York to London melts another 3 square metres of Arctic ice. If I’m responsible for that level of environmental impact (and I plan to prioritise train travel whenever I can, since trains use up to 50 percent less fuel than planes), I want to make sure it’s worth it. Rather than travelling to India just to shop and stay in plush palaces like I used to, I’ll now be on the lookout for Indian permaculture farms to stay at, learning skills I can take home with me (WWOOF is great for finding organic farms around the world to stay at in exchange for work), or for hotels and travel companies to write about that are involved in wildlife conservation or rewilding projects.
I discovered the power of this sort of sustainable travel during a road trip through Namibia in 2019. Realizing the vital role wildlife and landscapes played in attracting tourism, Namibia was the first African country to write provisions for environmental protection and conservation of natural resources into its constitution. Community conservancies and privately owned reserves now cover about a sixth of the country. Many of these host eco lodges that are majority owned and run by locals, funnelling money back into local communities instead of into the pockets of wealthy foreign investors.
Travelling slowly will, of course, mean taking more time off work. It will likely mean storing up vacation days and taking one longer trip each year instead of a few shorter ones, or waiting for a sabbatical or long-service leave. Since many companies have realised through the pandemic that employees can work effectively from home, it might also mean negotiating a temporary remote working agreement added to the end of a holiday.
However we organise it, what will matter most once the world slowly reopens is the why behind our travels. I hope to see purposeful, regenerative travel being promoted on traditional and social media as aspirational. I hope we stop Insta-bragging about how many exotic destinations we’ve crammed into a year (that was me) or how luxurious our hotel room was, as a way of signalling our status and wealth. Instead, I hope we start crowing about how long we stayed in one place, how we gave back to the community there, or about the incredible camping spot or hike we found close to home.
Whether any of this comes to pass remains to be seen. But what is certain is that the pandemic has opened a door for us, one leading to a cleaner, greener travel world. Whether we choose to step through it or not is up to us.
THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED ONLINE HERE