Is there such thing as Responsible Travel

Had an article published recently in Escape, which is a publication by the travel company Archipelago Choice (our partner in Azores Nature). I wrote the article two years ago but the publication was delayed due to covid so it's not so topical now but by looks of it a few of the points still stand. 

By the sounds of it with the cost of living crisis we could well see a reduction in travel by economic restrictions rather than choice anyway. If I understand correctly the UK is now in official recession with the Bank of England suggesting it could be the longest recession in history. With COP27 and COP 16 coming up and the Ramsar Conference of the Parties on this weekend it will be interesting to see if any further developments in the capitalisation of nature. After a very exciting escalation this time last year of carbon credits, biodiversity net gain, offset companies floating on the stock market, the Environment and Agriculture Bills drafts with new commitments to nature recovery etc there have been a lot of set backs in 2022 mainly due to the Ukraine situation and the focus on food security and even threats to cancel Environmental Land Management Schemes and a U-turn on the progressing to a multi-indices eco-economy.  Anyway hopefully there will be opportunity in this new recession as there can't be too much more juice to squeeze out of fundamental economic growth (particularly in the global north) so a change in the way we measure and see growth could be a feature of the economic recovery and associated environmental and social recovery. 

As we go through this mill (net closing in or whatever you want to call it), there will be a lot of 'chaff/bi-catch/waste' as this squeezes and resulting economic suffering and hardship particularly to those in over exposed positions (dependency or over-leveraged) so hopefully there are also nature based solutions to be pushed out to alleviate that stress. 

Will see how we can apply some of this to our projects and business over the coming few years including how we are going to maintain and adapt our projects in sustainable travel. I'm hoping that Bulgaria will be a good focus area for us as we can organise cheap travel and camping on our project site. I'm going out there next week. We are also starting a new small construction project in Malta and there's a possibility that I'll be doing something with Mark Constantine on his latest project of introducing Dalmation Pelicans. So a few little recession opportunities hopefully in which presumably our core business activity will cool off. Hopefully a perfect example of why triple bottom line parallel structures are a good idea- if there's no money to make then there's social and natural capital to work on. It's interesting that the legal deadline for Beddington Farmlands will occur during this recession too- a perfect environment for implementing a corporate-council-community model to maximise multi-indices value creation. More on all our ventures HERE .