How to Combine Long-haul Travel and Sustainability

I recently spoke with Valerie from Wild about Earth in Belgium. She offers trips to far-flung destinations with a sustainable impact. I asked her about her choices as a sustainable travel provider that also offers luxury trips to far-flung destinations.

How did you get started with Wild about Earth?

For years, I had the privilege of designing luxury trips using private charters from lodge to lodge. It’s a very comfortable way to travel, but more and more often I found myself missing an authentic connection with my destination and asking myself: What impact does our visit have on nature and the communities that live here? What am I taking from this place, and what am I actually giving back? Is this really balanced?

I explored what sustainability can mean in the travel industry. Not just offsetting CO2, but also giving something back to our destinations in a sustainable way. No colonialism, no token donations. Instead, engaging in dialogue with the right partners, tracing the supply chain at the destination, and making it more sustainable. Asking where help is needed and responding to those needs.

Can they really go together? Long-haul travel and sustainability?

In the travel industry, sustainability is still too often seen as an impossibility, because people focus solely on the negative impact (CO2 emissions). For an optimist like me, long-haul travel is essential for enriching our minds, supplementing the limited school system, fostering tolerance, and fueling our boundless curiosity.

That is why I see it as our responsibility—in addition to reducing CO2 emissions (such as by traveling more slowly, less frequently, and for longer periods so that our flights are worthwhile)—to travel in a way that has a positive impact on nature and local communities at our destinations.

How do you combine sustainability with long-haul travel?

Travel remains the priority. However, from now on, I’ll be working “behind the scenes” to ensure the right sustainable choices are made, so that travelers can travel worry-free and without guilt. To that end, I choose partners who reduce their emissions while also providing local jobs, paying above-average wages, and investing in training for local employees who want to advance to management or ownership roles. Partners who serve locally sourced food and invest in basic needs (such as medical care and education for children in local communities).

By traveling to less-visited places away from the crowds, your environmental impact at your destination is reduced, and you bring attention to communities that would otherwise be overlooked. This provides financial support (through local purchases, guides, etc.) and makes the destination attractive to local governments, encouraging them to provide basic necessities such as education and medical care. And by meeting the people there, you get to see what authenticity truly means.

This is“passive contribution.” On the other hand, those who’d like to go a step further can“actively contribute”—that is, roll up their sleeves and get to work while traveling, such as:

• I invite travelers to lend a hand on a sheep farm or help care for the sled dogs in Greenland.
• Going on patrol with veterinarians during a safari in Africa and collecting DNA samples from an elephant under anesthesia.
• Help tag turtles or sharks in the Indian Ocean.
• A hiking trip in the Indian Himalayas to deliver schoolbooks to remote villages and a course with wise Buddhist monks in South Korea.
• Herding reindeer with the Sami in Norway or staying with a jazz musician in Soweto, South Africa.

Or spend a few days living among a local community and drawing inspiration from the way of life on the other side of the world. For example, with a nomadic family in Mongolia, on an Inuit family’s farm in Greenland, in an Andean community in Peru, or during a visit to a Kurdish family in Turkey. Or perhaps you’d prefer to play soccer with a local youth team that keeps kids off the streets in Colombia or Brazil?

And after all that activity with your travel group, you can retreat to the comfort of your own hotel room or private tented camp, complete with a bucket shower set up just for you.

These are all valuable life lessons for us and our children…The school of life

Philanthropic Travel

By incorporating philanthropic experiences into your travels—based on the needs of your destination—you can help where the need is greatest. The word “philanthropy” has a negative connotation these days. I want to restore this word to its former glory. After all, it simply means “love for humanity, as in caring for others.”

You decide for yourself how big or small that contribution or experience is.

Through Wild About Earth 🌏, I combine my love for exclusive travel and philanthropy to connect travelers with themselves, each other, and other cultures. In this way, I inspire the next generation to care for our planet.

Exclusive, tailor-made trips that use travel to restore, renew, and revitalize places; integrating the needs of local communities and nature into our trips to leave behind resilient and thriving destinations after we depart.

For those who travel with a concern for the world of tomorrow and prefer authenticity over superficiality, without sacrificing comfort. Unparalleled service and local support. For the traveler who understands that exceptional experiences are worth the investment.

Be the change you want to see in the world – Mahatma Gandhi

In the meantime, I’m traveling the world with my children, and I hope to inspire my children—and all children around the world—to take care of tomorrow’s world by leading by example and taking them along on this journey (The School of Life).

In the summer of 2023, as a single mom, I traveled through Mongolia for a month with my children (who were 5 and 6 at the time). There, we were inspired by the spiritual leaders (shamans) we met, lived as nomads in the remote Khangai Mountains, cheered on the horse races during the Nadaam Festival, and donated “toys on request” to a summer camp for children in the Orkhon Valley.

A similar trip to Colombia is planned for the summer of 2026. There, we’ll play soccer with a youth team that aims to keep children off the streets and away from the drug trade. We’ll learn how to throw a lasso from the cowboys of the Los Llanos marshlands and travel to hidden beaches on the Pacific Ocean, where we’ll join forces with the conservation team fighting illegal fishing.

You can find more information about Valerie and Wild about Earth’s trips here.

Helicopter photo: courtesy of the Morukuru Family