G Adventures has made a “significant” financial investment in travel technology start-up, Reforest, to support the planting of trees to tackle the climate crisis.
Based in Brisbane, Australia, Reforest is a digital platform connecting travellers with communities that are restoring their ecosystems using reforestation.
This enables travellers to have trees planted in places where community tourism relies heavily on the preservation of the local environment.
The platform provides travellers with data measuring the positive impact of the trees planted on their behalf.
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Reforest also helps travel companies to understand their carbon footprint and connect them with projects to support their reforestation efforts.
Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures, said travellers are increasingly looking to ensure their travels have a meaningful impact and tree-planting is an effective way to reverse climate change and support community tourism.
“The preservation of local environments is critical to supporting community tourism as it helps improve air and water quality for local people, and supports wildlife habitats,” he said.
“Travellers want to see natural beauty, so we need the world’s most beautiful places to be around for as long as possible, and to stay as pristine as possible.
“The Reforest platform will help us achieve that goal and help combat climate change, as planting trees is one of the easiest ways to help decrease emissions.”
He added: “I’ve never been a fan of carbon-offsetting. The idea that you can have a negative impact in one place and do something positive somewhere else, and that somehow balances the scale, is not science to me, and most of all it doesn’t change people’s behaviour.
“Reforest provides a solution that truly has benefits for the places tourism touches and presents the results in a way travellers can see the positive change they are enabling.
“I’m also excited for us to be able to broaden our reach and impact by providing this service to more travel companies.”
Daniel Walsh (pictured), co-founder of Reforest, said G Adventures’ stake will enable the company to improve its technology and expand its offering.
He said: “At Reforest we are leading the conversion of hard climate data, for example kg CO2, into visual, understandable measures such as ‘trees planted’.
“A customer can see the trees a travel company is planting on their behalf and track the cumulative restorative impact of their trip as a result.
“Having G Adventures as an investor provides us with the funding we need to bring our innovative new platform to market.”
