Sustainability
and Anti-oppression
What does 'Sustainable Travel' Mean to Travelers?
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 their 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 can be defined as “travel in such a way that there exists a harmonious interaction between travelers, host communities, and the planet, promoting mutually beneficial impacts on all.”
Sustainable travel requires that each traveler consider the interconnectedness of all aspects of the travel experience. These components broadly include: how resources are used and consumed during travel; how travelers can support the local economies of the places they visit, reexamine notions of value around goods and services purchased during travel, and consider class privilege on a global scale; how to ethically behave around plants, animals, and other lifeforms encountered during travel; the centering of cultural exchange, respect, and self-education throughout the travel experience; and finally, an examination of each traveler's values and overarching intention behind the travel experience, rooted in an acknowledgement of privilege and gratitude.
A holistic concept at its core, sustainable travel cannot be achieved through a piecemeal approach, focusing on just one aspect or one component of the travel experience. Instead, sustainable travel must incorporate and integrate all components together, a radical transformation of the growth-centric status quo of the travel industry, in a model 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 recognises its communities and places are living and complex systems; constantly interacting, evolving, self-organising, efficient, learning, and distinct. Regenerative tourism is a vital ontology and practical model to create abundance, balance, and conditions to support other life, resilience, and contribute to 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 has been done by the tourism industry. Through courageous systems change, regenerative tourism is a process of renewal and revitalisation of local and global systems to foster thriving and interconnected systems.
Regenerative tourism is “creating the conditions for life to continuously renew itself, to transcend into new forms, and to flourish amid ever-changing life conditions” (Hutchins and Storm, 2019) - through tourism.
Anti-Oppression
"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)