Sustainability
JUSTICE AND ANTI-OPPRESSION
What is sustainable travel?
At RISE Travel Institute, we see sustainable travel as the following:
​
Sustainable travel acknowledges the systemic and global nature of travel, in which each traveler's actions and impacts affect and are affected by the places they visit and, by extension, the planet as a whole. Far beyond the common conception that sustainable travel is synonymous with environmentally friendly travel, sustainable travel emphasizes mutually beneficial interactions between host communities, travelers, and the planet.
Sustainable travel requires that each traveler consider the interconnectedness of all aspects of the travel experience. These components broadly include:
-
Being cognisant of how resources are used and consumed
-
Supporting the local economies of the places they visit
-
Reexamining notions of value around goods and services
-
Ethically behaving around plants, animals, and other lifeforms
-
Centering cultural exchange, respect, and self-education
-
Examining values and overarching intention, rooted in an acknowledgement of privilege and gratitude
At its core, sustainable travel is a holistic concept and practice. It cannot be achieved through a piecemeal approach focusing on just one aspect or component of the travel experience. Instead, sustainable travel must incorporate and integrate all parts, radically transforming the growth-centric status quo of the travel industry in a way that promotes intentionality and prosperity for all involved in the travel experience.
What is regenerative tourism?
Tourism is not just a sector but a dynamic environment in which many systems connect and interact. Regenerative tourism recognizes communities and places as living and complex systems, constantly interacting, evolving, self-organizing, streamlining, learning, and distinguishing. Regenerative tourism is a vital ontology and practical model that creates abundance, balance, and conditions that support other life, resilience, and a greater system of well-being.
Regenerative tourism aims to shift the tourism industry lens from an extractive model of maintaining the social, ecological, cultural, and economic status quo to repairing the damage that the tourism industry has caused. Through courageous system changes, regenerative tourism renews and revitalizes local and global networks to foster thriving and interconnected systems.
Regenerative tourism creates “the conditions for life to continuously renew itself, to transcend into new forms, and to flourish amid ever-changing life conditions” through tourism (Hutchins and Storm, 2019).
What does anti-oppression mean?
"Anti-Oppression is the strategies, theories, actions and practices that actively challenge systems of oppression on an ongoing basis in one's daily life and in social justice/change work. Anti-oppression work seeks to recognize the oppression that exists in our society and attempts to mitigate its effects and eventually equalize the power imbalance in our communities. Oppression operates at different levels (from individual to institutional to cultural) and so anti-oppression must as well." (Anti-oppression Guide, Beatley Library, Simmons University)