Learning How to Adapt to Climate Change in the Netherlands
The more you travel the more you realise we have to learn – especially from other nations. The Netherlands is a case in point. Climate change is going to have…
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The more you travel the more you realise we have to learn – especially from other nations. The Netherlands is a case in point. Climate change is going to have…
Do the phrases global warming and carbon footprint prick your conscience about going on holiday? On a recent visit to the Dominican Republic, I learnt how people holidaying on this…
Mark Bibby Jackson looks forward to 2023, predicting the future of tourism could be positive, albeit that we have to be conscious of its negative impacts. My New Year’s Resolution…
Whether it is for ethical reasons or health, increasingly large numbers of people are turning towards veganism. According to the Veganuary website 620,000 people tried being vegan last January, from…
Mark Bibby Jackson goes stargazing and trekking in Trentino in the Italian Alps, and visits the Forest of Violins as well as Trento Italy. It was 5.45 am when Arild…
Mark Bibby Jackson returns to the German capital to go on a walking tour in Berlin through Spreefeld, Spreeacker and Teepee Land. We are standing in the remains of the…
Mark Bibby Jackson talks with Jared Meyers, Chairman of Legacy Vacation Resorts about their climate action initiatives. Sometimes the enormity of the journey we all have to make towards GHG…
Mark Bibby Jackson talks with David Perez, CEO of the Tenerife Tourism Corporation, about Tenerife Sustainable Tourism Efforts. MJ: Post-covid there has been a lot of talk about sustainable tourism…
With increasing awareness of responsible tourism and the emboldened campaign against single-use plastic around the world intensifying, Travel Begins at 40 has taken a look at some of the best…
Mark Bibby Jackson talks with Michael Dyer, Managing Director of Borana Conservancy, member of the Climate Friendly Travel Registry, about its conservation work in Kenya, and plans for a sustainable…
After completing his UK road trip from Oxford to Edinburgh, Mark Bibby Jackson continues north to Inverness Scotland in search not of a mythical monster but a very real approach…
Mark Bibby Jackson talks with Al Judge, co-founder of AliKats Mountain Holidays Morzine, in the French Alps about how mountain tourism can be more sustainable. 1) How do you believe…
Mark Bibby Jackson goes on a tour of Leuven Belgium, a town with the oldest university in Belgium and the home of Stella, where he gets a glimpse of the…
With sustainability and regenerative travel at the heart of what Travel Begins at 40 believes in, we have decided to highlight some great offers from like-minded travel companies. First is…
Mark Bibby Jackson talks with Dr Bijan Khazai CEO of Hotel Resilient, and Risklayer, one of the many SUNx Malta SDG17 Partners providing Climate Friendly Travel support in areas such…
Travel Begins at 40 has become a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, today, 4 November. The Glasgow Declaration encourages the acceleration of climate action in…
A revolutionary new travel concept which auctions travel experiences to consumers launched on 25 October. The auction promotes socially responsible travel while raising donations to support the NHS …
Cardamom Tented Camp ecolodge in Cambodia has been announced by Green Destinations as one of the 2021 Top 100 Destination Sustainability Stories in the world…
With the change of regime in Afghanistan, there are many groups of workers who are left without income, support and who are at potential risk due to their work with…
Mark Bibby Jackson looks into several initiatives aimed to confront the worrying increase in poaching African wildlife, a by-product of Covid. With the global death toll from Covid breaking the…
Mark Bibby Jackson talks with Willem Niemeijer founder of Khiri Travel, and CEO of YAANA Ventures about Slow Travel. The past few years have seen many people, companies and organisations…
We may all be confused by the UK Government’s traffic light system, but the good news is that the UK is opening up for domestic tourism. So what should you…
Pauline Ronnet examines the connection between the Extreme E racing series and sustainable tourism. The connection between sport, climate change and tourism may not seem obvious at first thought. But…
2021 is the start of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which, officially launching this June, aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and…
When we established this website part of the ethos was to provide a trusted source of information on responsible travel and ethical travel for the over 40 traveller.
For us, ethical travel covers a wide ambit from sustainable and responsible travel to ecotourism, but basically it means forming a partnership with local communities in a two-way process, rather than exploiting them.
One such measure is to refrain from using plastic bottles while travelling or at least to minimise your use of single use plastic. I still reuse the same plastic bottle I purchased down a supermarket somewhere many months down the line.
A great example of how responsible tourism can work well is community-based tourism. This should mean that not only does the local community share the sustainable benefits of tourism but that it has control of the direction that the tourism takes as well.
Responsible travel and sustainable tourism are often seen as being pretty synonymous. Read more about sustainable tourism. We also have a series of articles in our #sustainablesunday series.
Unfortunately, there is a danger of ethical considerations becoming part of a meaningless PR-driven CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) exercise. However, our intention is to highlight those tourism companies that are really trying to make a difference. Working together we can make a difference too. And if you’d like to carbon offset your trip, we’ve written a guide for that too, clarifying the potential pitfalls of carbon offsetting.