Ethical travel

Sustainable adventure & activity tourism

If you are considering adventure & activity travel abroad, you may already be interested in learning about the area and people that you are visiting. Tourism Concern is the leading authority on ethical travel, and strongly promotes the idea of planning holidays that are enriching for the traveller and the locals. Tourism has the potential to wreck local communities and swallow up scarce natural resources, just think of golf courses in Portugal. On the other hand, properly managed tourism has the potential to do tremendous good, for example trips, tours and projects where the tourist mixes with the locals, possibly stays in their homes, and contributes directly to the local economy. Tourism Concern provide the following guidelines for sustainable community tourism.

  1. Be run with the involvement and consent of local communities. (Local people should participate in planning and managing the tour).
  2. Give a fair share of profits back to the local community. (Ideally this will include community projects (health, schools, etc)).
  3. Involve communities rather than individuals. (Working with individuals can disrupt social structures).
  4. Be environmentally sustainable (Local people must be involved if conservation projects are to succeed).
  5. Respect traditional culture and social structures.
  6. Have mechanisms to help communities cope with the impact of western tourists.
  7. Keep groups small to minimise cultural / environmental impact.
  8. Brief tourists before the trip on appropriate behaviour.
  9. Not make local people perform inappropriate ceremonies, etc.
  10. Leave communities alone if they don't want tourism. (People should have the right to say 'no' to tourism).

Please visit www.tourismconcern.org.uk for more information.

Action Aid

When you travel to distant places you often receive a warm welcome and hospitality from local people, even when they don't have much themselves and can only imagine the lifestyle that you're used to. We consider that we have a moral obligation to assist the people who live in the communities that we visit.

How? We support ActionAid. ActionAid is an international anti-poverty agency working in over 40 countries, taking sides with poor people to end poverty and injustice together. We hope that you will take some time to look at their website and consider whether you would like to help them with their incredibly challenging work.

ActionAid was founded in 1972 as a British charity delivering direct benefits to individual sponsored children. By the end of the century it had evolved into a loosely connected family of European charities known as the ActionAid Alliance, and its approach to child sponsorship had also changed considerably; direct benefits having been phased out. The child is now seen as an ambassador for their community and sponsors are asked to support an integrated package of work to tackle the causes and effects of poverty in that community, including rights-based advocacy and mobilisation .

The following text is from the ActionAid website:

"ActionAid is a partnership between people in rich and poor countries dedicated to ending poverty and injustice. ActionAid works with local people to fight hunger and disease, seek justice and education for women, hold companies and governments accountable and cope with emergencies in over 40 countries. We want a world without poverty, where nobody goes to bed hungry."

UK Mountain Rescue

Closer to home, we feel that we must recognise the heroic work of the UK mountain rescue teams. As adventurers, we hope never to need their services, but we know that sometimes the unthinkable happens. Mountain and cave rescue services are provided by thousands of volunteers, available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, whatever the weather.

Mountain rescue in the UK is free of charge to the casualty, but relies on the support and generosity of the public to maintain this valuable community service.

There are several ways you can support the work of mountain rescue. To find out more, or to make a donation online, click on the links below. It costs a tremendous amount to fund a mountain rescue team – one vehicle alone costs upwards of £35,000. There is also a very large overhead in the running and replacement costs for items such as rope, which must be replaced after a given time, even if they have not been used.

Further information

We recommend that you visit the British FCO and The Travel Foundation websites for information on ethics and sustainable tourism.

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