It’s the world’s final nice wilderness – so why are we nonetheless taking travellers to Antarctica? Intrepid co-founder Darrell Wade shares his ideas.
With no full-time residents, governments, automobiles or army, Antarctica is one the final locations on earth that exists in the best way nature meant. So in a spot the place nature actually reigns supreme, it’s essential to contemplate your influence on such a fragile ecosystem.
While journey to Antarctica is under no circumstances excellent, we’d not have determined to function there if we felt it was negligent to take action. In truth, the extra we realized about how Antarctica approaches tourism, the extra we felt it was vital to be a part of sustaining its future. The area’s governance, give attention to worth over quantity and dedication to utilizing tourism within the pursuit of peace and science are in contrast to something we’ve seen in some other ‘cruise’ locations all over the world.
Intrepid Travel’s co-founder, Darrell Wade, was not too long ago requested to share his ideas on tourism in Antarctica for the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, an essay that was offered on the United Nations final month. This piece offers travellers an awesome perception into how, as a accountable tour operator, Intrepid is approaching journey in Antarctica.
“For Intrepid, setting up operations in Antarctica was a considered choice. But that didn’t make it an easy decision,” he writes. “Intrepid made the decision to operate in Antarctica as we believed it would offer an incredible experience and create value for our customers… We also knew that operating our own product would provide us with greater control of all aspects, including environmental considerations.”
All Intrepid journeys, each in Antarctica and throughout the globe, are 100% carbon impartial, however this wasn’t sufficient for us to fulfill our environmental and social obligations. As a part of our seven-point local weather motion plan, we’re additionally dedicated to science-based decarbonisation targets which embody double offsets on our Polar Expeditions.
“Offsets are not enough to address the climate crisis, which is why we have committed to science-based targets to decarbonise our business at the pace and scale that science tells us is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5C,” Darrell says. And he’s hopeful that Intrepid’s stance on local weather motion will encourage different operators within the area to do the identical.
“Intrepid is a relatively new player in Antarctica, but the continent has long been supported by strong governance – unlike many of the other destinations in which we operate,” he says. “Much of the approach to tourism in Antarctica can provide a baseline for a more responsible cruise industry worldwide. As part of a responsible future for Antarctica tourism, we can draw on lessons that help inform the entire cruise industry.”
This includes plans to spend money on a brand new energy-efficient ship to assist us attain our net-zero emissions targets by 2035. It additionally means working extra carefully with citizen scientists, which we intention to include into all of our polar voyages via partnerships with organisations just like the WWF.
“Much of global ocean tourism is extractive in the sense it does little to mitigate travellers’ impact, let alone understand it. But the idea that tourism can support science and research is a shared-value model worth exploring,” Darrell says. “Citizen science also deepens a traveller’s sense of purpose in a destination – it goes beyond the idea that simply visiting Antarctica will make a traveller a steward of the destination. It actually brings together leisure and science, people and planet and has exciting potential for tourism more broadly, on both water and land.”
Travel, typically, is a privilege, and it’s a lucky handful that get the chance to expertise a vacation spot like Antarctica. We nonetheless have work to do to make our expeditions to the area as accountable as we are able to, whereas persevering with to coach and encourage our travellers to look after and shield our pure world.
“The world’s last great wilderness will always draw visitors,” Darrell concludes, “and we must execute our moral, environmental, social and economic obligation to create a negligible impact and non-extractive existence in Antarctica to sustain this destination for future generations.”
Read Darrell’s full essay for the UN Ocean Panel, and study extra about our dedication to accountable journey and decreasing our influence in Antarctica right here.