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YAANA Ventures, owner of Khiri Travel and Grasshopper Adventures, is proud to announce its membership in the Adventure Travel Conservation Fund (ATCF), an international non-profit organization focused on funding on-the-ground conservation projects around the world. The ATCF provides members in the travel and outdoor industry an avenue to directly support projects that are critical to protecting the future of adventure travel.

“YAANA Ventures fully supports the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit in responsible tourism,” said Willem Niemeijer, CEO of YAANA Ventures. “Our membership of ATCF reinforces the ‘people and planet’ part of that commitment.”

ATCF members include adventure and outdoor organizations that have come together to protect international travel destinations. “Without the conservation of these unique environments, cultures and communities, we risk losing the very experiences that we seek when we travel,” said Soraya Shattuck, ATCF Executive Director.

Once a year, the ATCF awards grants to organizations seeking conservation funding. Grant recipients are nominated and voted on by members of ATCF. One hundred per cent of ATCF membership dues fund chosen conservation projects.

Both non-profit and for-profit organizations, which may include conservation groups, indigenous people groups, tour operators, or accommodations, can receive project funding from ATCF. To learn more about the funding criteria, or to apply for a future ATCF grant, please visit the projects page on the ATCF website. To learn more about joining ATCF and becoming a member organization supporting global conservation, visit adventuretravelconservationfund.org.

This is an excerpt from an article first published on Adventure Travel News.

Shahida Khanom, a PhD candidate at GIFT, is conducting research on “Co-lingual hot authentication of intangible cultural heritage: the Rush Mela festival in the Bangladesh Sundarbans”. The aim of her research is to develop a conceptual model on host-guest authentication of intangible cultural heritage incorporating both host and guest perspectives.

“Let’s make Europe even wilder together!” is the motto of Simon Collier representing the European Safari Company. They support and connect locally based partners with unique experiences to the traveler. The European Safari Company hand picks untouched nature-based experiences. Simon believes every trip you take has a direct impact on the area, the conservation efforts and the people that you meet. From this experience he draws a line in the following interview with Peter Prokosch to the mission of Linking Tourism & Conservation:

What has European Safari Company in common with LT&C and what could we learn from your experience?

As a new style tourism and conservation organisation we aim to demonstrate some critical

examples of direct impact of tourism – for the better! Conservation needs a business model and tourism has a significant role to play in this but this needs to have a dual impact – for people & nature. The European landscape has scattered rural communities, abandon lands and untapped nature; the ESC is bringing all of these into single experiences and highlighting direct social benefits, economic support and driving local conservation agendas. As a key lesson, accepting that conservation needs an economic model attached to it that isn’t dependant on governmental or NGO support.

LT&C is profiling cases (“LT&C-Examples”), where tourism is supporting the establishmentor development of protected areas. Real impact LT&C achieves, if such good examples are growing. What are your ideas for creating incentives that LT&C-Examples are getting learned from and replicated?

Working models or examples of tourism / conservation success is only the opening conversation to get people to entertain the notion of a working conservation model or alternative low impact land use model. As brutal as it sounds, changing mind-sets is normally very difficult unless you impact people’s pockets – leading examples and ‘early adopter’ incentives can help get the ball rolling. Furthermore, market place support, training and assisted development is not only essential to the process but will also set the standards. At the end of the day, we need local communities to not only see the benefit of nature but also benefit from it, and therefore become the long term custodians and business partners with nature / nature protection. Nature based businesses have a greater impact on local economics than direct support, as each guest can have impact on several low level businesses in the area…the local cheese farm, honey producer or even the corner grocer. What is key, is creating a brand value attached to this support and forging relationships which are all tied to conservation.

Do you have any thoughts for the future perspectives and development of LT&C?

LT&C Penguins are essential as they allow a formidable unified base across the boundaries of the world, its policies and cultural differences – but they need to access their own networks to allow for more efficient growth of the initiative, scalability is key at this point.

Engaging the traveling public will help grow the value of the LT&C brand – where travellers can select destinations or offerings on the basis of their sustainability, conservation ethic and impact model.

LT&C could become the hour glass model – being the key point in the middle between the

networks of conservation minded organisations and the available traveling public looking to make a difference.

It’s a great initiative with huge potential – keep it up!!

Some of the most vulnerabe tourist operators have benefited from assistance for resilient efforts towards the effects and risks of Climate Change.

The Samoa Tourism Authority (STA) in collaboration with the Integrating Climate Change Risks into Tourism Sector (ICCRITS) facilitated training on adaptation to climate change for some of the small scale tourism operators.

With funding provided by ICCRITS for kayaking equipment and training through the Small Grants Scheme, three selected businesses of tourism operators now have the capacity to support new revenue streams needed to respond to the effects of climate change.

The three beneficiaries are the Sweet Escape Fales at Manono Island, Sunset View Fales also at Manono Islands, and Joelan Beach Fales at Lano in Savai’i Island.

The STA team through its Climate Change project and members of its Planning and Development Division facilitated the assistance.

This is an excerpt from an article originally published by the South Pacific Tourism Organisation.