Sri Lanka culture & activity holiday, tailor made
How Sri Lanka culture & activity holiday, tailor made makes a difference
Environment
By choosing us you will not only enjoy a world class luxury tented safari experience, you will also directly be making a substantial contribution to our conservation efforts to protect Sri Lanka’s natural habitats and endangered species, whilst also contributing to uplifting rural community tourism initiatives supported by us.
Reducing our Carbon Footprint
We are on our way to become the world’s first operationally carbon-neutral “Pack in and Pack out” luxury tented safari operation.
Enabling Carbon Neutral Camping Holidays
We will develop and market the first of a kind carbon neutral holidays to our customers. Our strategy will be two fold, firstly we audit our own operational carbon footprint and then measure the client carbon footprint when staying with us, taking into account their travel and time spent in our facilities. We will then offset their carbon footprint and we will also offset our own operational footprint, hence enabling us to remain carbon neutral as an organisation and we in return will enable the customer to have no carbon footprint in the component we provide in their holidays. We will do this as a climate complaint camping provider.
The company will remain carbon neutral and we will purchase a bank of UN certified carbon credits (certified emissions reductions (CERs)) and hold it in one of the carbon registries. We will also ensure that the credits we purchase have an ethical value addition. For example the project activity that produced the credits will be from an activity that has enhanced communities or the environment, oppose to destruction of industrial gases. We will retire the credits in blocks of 10 tones of carbon (10 credits at a time)
Community
We aim to lead by example, and we ensure that our business has long term benefits for our local communities, the environment and our customers. The philosophy is to develop and promote, ethical, responsible and sustainable luxury tented holidays, thereby creating jobs and income for our communities, whilst at the same time minimizing our impact on the environment and our planet’s natural resources. We have developed our own Environmental and Social Sustainability Policy, as a guide to our continuing journey.
Eco C-R-E-A-M
Community-Responsibility-Environment-Awareness-Management
We aim to re-invent the tourism model in Sri Lanka by leading from the front to ensure that our business has long term benefit for our communities, the environment and our customers. The entire premise is to develop and promote ethical, responsible and sustainable tourism initiatives and products, thereby creating more jobs and greater income for our communities, whilst at the same time minimizing our impact on the environment and our planet’s resources. In order to work towards our objectives, we have structured our action plan into a framework which will evolve with time, and to be our guiding tool on our journey towards becoming a truly responsible Tour O perator in Sri Lanka. Enter Eco C-R-E-A-M (Community-Responsibility-Environment-Awareness-Management), and in this document we detail our vision, and explain where we are now in our long and never-ending journey to become the pioneering champion of Eco C-R-E-A-M.
The Community
We believe that the people, our community, have to be central to any strategy which involves protecting the environment and all communities. For this reason, we believe that the community and people at all levels, from our work places to rural farmers, have to be the most important asset. They will be the catalyst to drive this policy. The success of our vision depends on our ability to take our friends and colleagues and our working communities, with us on our journey.
We, more than any other Tour Operator in Sri Lanka, depend on the unspoilt and pristine outdoors of this magical island to run our business. Our wilderness and our eco systems combine to be our heartbeat, and protecting our most important resource is not only a responsibility but a necessity for our own existence as a Company. The most important resources of our eco system are in the hands of our communities, and as guardians and protectors as well as destroyers and abuses, man has done both for thousands of years. Poaching, deforestation, unsustainable farming methods and pesticide pollution of our waterways are just some of our challenges. This is especially true after many years of neglect and destruction of our vital infrastructure and communities, during the long years of civil war.
We will continue to support, enable and educate our communities in sustainable and responsible lifestyles. We aim to lead by example by providing tangible benefits to our partner communities by providing vital resources in capacity building. We will ensure that our products, and our services have minimum impact on our communities and their livelihoods.
What we are doing right now
We recruit and train staff from the locality in which we work
We buy locally produced goods and services
We build products around local community knowledge of fauna, flora and farming methods
We support community tourism initiatives by incorporating community lifestyles seamlessly into our programmes, such as picnic stops in village homes, and fishing with local fishing communities etc
We work in capacity building in schools and communities, in entrepreneurship, knowledge farming and value additions
Wildlife and the Environment
We educate and protect endangered species in line with the Red List issued by the ICUN.
We actively discourage and educate our communities, as well as campaign to stop animal abuse in all forms, including use of circus animals and cruelty to animals relating to blood sports.
We educate and invest in protecting our fauna and flora, and we support development projects, including environment education, wildlife conservation and reforestation. We work closely with the Sri Lanka Wildlife Foundation.
We discourage and advocate not to collect, remove or cut any plant or parts of any plants (seeds, roots or leaves) by our customers, staff and communities.
We participate in programmes that involve removal of invasive floral species, such as cactus and lantana, and set up our operations with scientists in and around the National Parks and participate in reforestation activities.
We are planting an endemic tree in our Udawalawe land, located next to the Udawalawe National Park, for every visitor we serve.
Our conservation efforts
We contribute 1% of the revenue to the Sri Lanka Wilderness Foundation to work on selected projects such as Minimize Leopard Deaths due to Human Leopard Conflict.
Sri Lanka culture & activity holiday, tailor made
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