Becoming a More Conscious Traveller…
Travelling is how we build our understanding of and compassion for the world. Our desire is to protect it. It’s what enables us to feel the power and fragility of wild animals in wild areas, and to better fathom the perfect harmony and purpose of their place in the cycle of life. It’s through travelling that we are able to stand before the world’s great snow-capped mountains and winding rivers of hippo and crocodile. To live out scenes that literary explorers have detailed in treasured hardcovers – in tales that have woken us up to life. It’s through our voyages that we meet the people and cultures that call out to us from the pages of National Geographic, and feel the power of human connection.
It’s because of individuals travelling to lodges and camps that support and empower communities around them, and conserve the natural world they call home, that these things can happen at all. And it’s due to the transport of travel that we can rescue rhinos from poaching hot-spots, monitor endangered wildlife and fly in medical care for human and animal alike.
Travel has an important role in our lives, in humanity, in understanding and in progress.
It’s practical, purposeful, and can have a positive impact on the world. But the cost to the health of the earth that carbon emissions from international flights poses is not something we can ignore. Just as we can’t ignore poaching or wildlife-human conflict. As such, we are encouraging our travellers to offset their long-distance flights by getting involved with two projects that we are running with the Great Plains Foundation. That is, a solar lantern programme and a tree-planting programme, which we are establishing in all three of the countries where our lodges and camps reside.
Your Carbon Emissions
Most major airlines also offer detailed calculations of the emissions from your specific flight and the opportunity to offset those emissions through a third party verified platform. Although there are many variables that go into calculating the total emissions from air travel, on average one hour of commercial flying time per person is equivalent to 250kg or .28 tons of C02 emissions. To calculate your total emissions multiply your total flying hours by .28 tons or 250kgs and this represents the approximate total tons of C02 emissions for one traveller. If you’re travelling with us, we hope you will choose to offset the CO2 emissions from your flight by supporting Great Plains Foundation and its tree planting and / or solar lantern programmes. We suggest a donation of $100 per traveller, which equates 4 trees or 3 solar lanterns.
The average Great Plains Conservation guest in Botswana, Zimbabwe or Kenya is responsible for between 4 and 10 tons of carbon emissions for their International round trip flight!
How To Offset Yours
1. Planting Trees
Through Conservation Roots, the Great Plains Foundation is partnering with local communities to restore indigenous trees to landscapes across Kenya, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. Working with these communities, partner organisations and school systems, Conservation Roots plants indigenous trees and teaches their value and critical role in functioning ecosystems in various education initiatives. Trees helps to sequester carbon emissions, by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and producing and emitting oxygen through photosynthesis.
It only costs $25 USD per tree ~ including the planting of an indigenous tree in a local community and related education programmes
2. Solar Lanterns
Great Plains Foundation has a strong, long-standing relationship with the communities near our camps. These communities are home to our Foundation projects that focus on skill development and conservation education. Through our partnership with these villages, we are working to address some of the challenges facing individuals living on the edge of the Okavango Delta.
While the challenges vary, there is one thing that adds to the difficulty of life here: the lack of light. Candles and paraffin lanterns are used by most households, but bring with them a very real risk of fire. Great Plains Foundation has launched a solar lantern project to distribute much-needed light.
By buying a lantern you are giving the gift of light in the form of a safe and sustainable light source to a member of our local community to use for school studies, to create handiwork to sell and to thus illuminate opportunities. Make a positive impact through your travels and join us in giving the gift of light – for $35 USD per lantern.
At Great Plains Conservation, we are invested in minimising our own carbon output wherever we can…
By protecting hundreds of thousands of acres from development, making massive investments in solar power in our camps, establishing kitchen gardens and eliminating single-use plastic, Great Plains Conservation aims to make the carbon footprint of our camps as small as possible.
Going on safari with Great Plains Conservation?
CALCULATE AND OFFSET YOUR CO2 EMISSIONS HERE
The Great Plains Foundation programmes seek to address multiple challenges facing conservation and communities in Africa including climate change and carbon emissions. To donate, please click here.
Feel free to contact us directly at info@greatplainsfoundation.com to learn more.
“A core belief of the Great Plains Foundation is that intact planetary systems have an inherent value and we should strive to maintain that integrity; to preserve that balance. Equally, when the systems we rely on are broken, we have a responsibility to rescue them, to maintain them, and to work towards steadily recovering the balance that has been unsettled.” – Dereck Joubert
