Nature positive businesses

Our CEO, Justin Francis is the biodiversity lead for the UK Government’s Council for Sustainable Business. In July 2021 the Council launched the Nature Handbook for Business, asking businesses to sign up to #GetNaturePositive.

What does ‘nature positive’ mean for travel and tourism?

We’ll be hearing a lot more about nature positive travel and holidays over the coming years. Nature positive is the new global goal for nature - the equivalent of net zero for carbon. The UK Government and 86 world leaders have committed to reversing the declines in nature by 2030.

It’s crucial that the travel and tourism industry goes far further than it has already gone, in order to protect and then restore nature.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) - the global body responsible for assessing the science of biodiversity - has identified the five biggest reasons for loss of nature as:

1. Pollution
2. Over exploitation
3. Land use change
4. Climate change
5. Non native invasive species

You can read more about tourism's impact on nature at Business For Nature, a global coalition of over 85 forward-thinking companies and partner organisations.

What is Responsible Travel doing?

In June 2020 Responsible Travel committed to become nature positive by 2030 - the first travel company to do so.

We have started to define the biggest impacts that we and our suppliers have on nature and the actions that we might take to address them.

We’re proud of the areas in which we’ve made great headway (we screen every supplier and holiday against our environmental criteria; have created a nature positive advice film and over 700 travel guides for customers; have curated a plastic free holiday offer; grown our vegan holiday collection and much more), but we know we need to go further so we’ll continue to work hard on this.

What can you do?

1. Ask questions of your holiday companies and hold them to account on nature.
2. Follow our tips on nature positive travel.
3. Take steps at home, as well as when away, to protect nature.

Thanks for supporting us on the journey to #GetNaturePositive.