Agents must work harder on making clients’ travel plans more sustainable

The spirit of collaboration must be fostered more generally, urged Roberto Klabin, founder of one of the creators of Brazil’s Big Three participants, Caiman Ecological Refuge. His project in Brazil’s Pantanal, a vast natural area larger than England, was the first of its kind to focus on rewilding, conservation and eco-tourism and is combined with his family’s original working ranch.

Having started the project in 1987 and created a large ecological corridor, he noted how evident the impact of a global rise in temperatures had been for his part of the world, with forest fires on an unprecedented scale and further predicted temperature rises of 4-6%.

“Climate change will continue to effect everything: the future we are expecting is much worse even than you can imagine,” he said. “We lost 60% of our forest in 2019, but we are learning to work together locally to ensure we are always ready when fire starts again, such as digging bore holes, installing water tanks, creating early-warning systems and funding fire brigades.

“Private enterprise can be a game-changer, and it’s so important to encourage partners to share your programmes – we focus on projects that are fundamental to our survival.”

As well as its work on Oncafari for its jaguar habituation project, which has successfully rewilded two orphaned jaguar cubs, Caiman is known for conservation efforts such as offering a base for the Hyacinth Macaw Institute, allowing for monitoring of the macaws’ nests to obtain data and help recuperate the population of the species throughout the Pantanal and remove it from the list of endangered species.

Comyn added he appreciated how overwhelming it can seem as a small business to know where to start in the world of sustainability, but said one of the reasons The Conscious Travel Foundation had been started in 2020 was to help smaller travel companies focus on what they could do.

“We offer a handrail to help people get on this route, offering tools to get you there,” he said. “We all get there a lot quicker if we collaborate. The pressure has often been on the hotels to do all the work, but travel designers can have a big impact: make a pledge, set an intention to do better, sign up to causes.

“To change the way you run your business is hard work, and future-proofing isn’t easy, but our vision is that all businesses should have a positive impact.”

In addition to making a positive impact environmentally and in responsible tourism, he added there were other tangible benefits to operating this way: “You will see repeat business, and will grow a team that won’t desert you, as they believe in what you are doing.”

Also speaking on the panel, Lisa Grainger, freelance journalist and deputy and travel editor of Times Luxx (pictured, second from right), said she had started to appreciate even more the role she could play.

“I have a lifelong interest in conservation, but being a luxury travel journalist meant I was also questioning some of the other things I was writing about – then I came to appreciate more the impact I could have by writing about projects like Brazil’s Big Three,” she told delegates. “My role is to tell their stories, get people there, and make them want to care and return. The next generation are even more green and responsible, and we need to recognise their changing attitudes.”