Just a few days ago, on Earth Day, I sat down to write an email to the ATE mailing list about our upcoming 2024 arctic expeditions. Considering the date, I thought about how I could tidily construct a message that both represented my values of being an advocate for polar ecosystems and also informed people about what promise to be some amazing expeditions to one of favorite places in the world. It felt forced.

There is no way of getting around the fact that by traveling, we are consuming in various direct and indirect fashions. By offering travel to these places, we are in our own way, contributing to the rapid climactic change that the polar regions are experiencing.

I thought about what Arctic Tern Expeditions is doing as a company to give back. Sharing natural spaces through travel came to mind. I do believe that there is an inherent and unshakeable worth to facilitating experiences that bring people to the wild places of our world. This is better shown through one of my favorite quotes by Baba Dioum:

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”

I continue to believe that travel can transform how we see the world, and that makes its potential to create positive change very high. As polar guides, we often tout this as the objective - to foster ambassadorship within the travelers that choose to see these places for themselves. Though this is a worthy goal, I think Arctic Tern Expeditions can do more to positively impact the communities we visit, the ecosystems we travel through, and the wildlife we seek out. Even if we do bring engaged, interested groups of people from around the world to highlight at-risk places like the arctic, there has to be some sort of realization that the issue of our climate is a huge and complex problem that cannot be solved solely through ambassadorship. I realized that Arctic Tern Expeditions, despite being a small travel company, has the capacity to do more.

After this realization and a fair bit of digging, I found that that for a 12 guest voyage with a full compliment of staff and crew, an 8-day cruise generates approximately 50 metric tons of CO2 equivalent through fuel consumption, food consumption, and waste generation. As a small expedition vessel, our total impact on an area is smaller than the bigger vessels that ply those same waters, but by no means is it zero.

The carbon emitted by any form of travel can not be easily exchanged on a 1 for 1 basis. Planting trees, sometimes on the other side of the world, is definitely a good thing when done correctly and at scale, but it certainly is not a guarantee that any amount of carbon will be sequestered. Efforts like these only go so far if communities are not educated about responsible land use, and if swathes of still-existing rainforest that are at risk of being clearcut are not protected. Ecosystem conservation needs to be paired with viable economic outcomes for local communities. Wildlife protection needs to be paired with heightened consumer awareness. Worthy climate action causes are legion.

For this reason, Arctic Tern Expeditions will donate 200% of the equivalent of all the carbon emissions generated by our trips at the mean carbon market rate. We will endeavor to identify and contribute to organizations on the front lines of ecosystem conservation, community education, and climate justice. Included in the calculation of our total carbon emissions is the fuel emissions from all modes of transport on ATE expeditions, food sourcing and consumption, waste generated, and all flights of ATE staff to and from their destinations. The funds will go to our new “Responsible Travel Fund,” and ATE will be transparent about how the funds are collected and distributed to climate action projects around the world.

ATE will strive to find ways to reduce our emissions through industry collaboration now and integrate new green technologies that arise in the future. We also will take measures to source goods and services from the local communities we travel through - thereby empowering them to conserve wild areas for the sake of their inherent value as a destination for sustainable tourism. Most of all, we will continue to foster ambassadorship for the amazing regions of the planet we are lucky enough to visit.

Responsible travel has been an ethos for Arctic Tern Expeditions from the start, and although its just a small step, its time we put our money where our mouth is.