Declaration of Climate Emergency

Climate Action Plan: Vertex Holiday

Declaration of Climate Emergency,climate and environment are essential factors for a healthy and sustainable life for every living being on this planet. As a travel and trekking tour operator based in the Himalayan country of Nepal, where the world’s highest peak Mt. Everest is located, it is our responsibility to take care of the environment, thus as a first step here’s our declaration of  climate Emergency.

Here at Vertex Holiday, we acknowledge the fact that there’s an emergency for climate and the environment. We support the initiative taken out by Tourism Declares and Glasgow Declaration. We strongly believe that a proper climate action plan is needed in order to meet the guidelines of reducing our carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

As a responsible tourism service provider, Vertex Holiday is dedicated to meeting its goals by any means possible. For that purpose, we have created our Climate Action Plan accordingly and are committed to following them thoroughly. Our climate action plan has been established, incorporating five main points, i.e. Evaluate, Minimize, Remove, Counterbalance, and Evolve.

This Action plan does not promise a quick-fix solution for our carbon emissions, rather it is our strategy for meeting the goals of our commitment to sustainable tourism. In order to achieve our goals, we will be adopting all these measures, which will be focusing on low-carbon business. We are delighted to be a part of the global effort to minimize emissions, as per the guidelines of the International Panel on Climate Change.

1. Evaluate:

Most of our tours and trips include the activities like walking, hiking, trekking, and similar activities. As the major source of energy in Nepal is Hydroelectricity, most of our services need energy is mostly eco-friendly, covering our office and accommodation during any tour or trip. Besides, foods during any trip are mostly locally sourced, and their carbon footprint is very minimal.

The major source of carbon emission from our tours and trips is definitely the means of transportation, which may include from a four-seater vehicle to a 20+ seater bus depending on the total number of clients during the trip. Domestic Air transport, including Twin otter planes and Helicopters, are also major emitters.

Major carbon emissions from Vertex Holiday’s services are from transportation and fuel used to prepare foods. Thus measuring our carbon footprint is a little bit complicated. However, for every trip, we keep a recording of the “distance of driving” as well as the “amount of fuel the vehicle consumes.” Our calculations are based according to the “amount of fuel consumed” divided by the “number of passengers” for measuring the CO2 emissions per person.

As measuring accurate CO2 emission is a rather complicated task. However, this method will provide us with insight into our average emission data. Moreover, we will be open to any other newer means of measuring our carbon footprint in the coming days.

2. Minimize:

As per the guidelines, we will be committed to reducing: if not minimizing, our carbon emissions. Due to the COVID-19 situation, we haven’t been able to properly evaluate our emissions, as the tourism industry was almost paralyzed. However, at the end of 2022, we ensure to properly analyze all of our recorded data of all tours and trips.

However, for the minimization of our Greenhouse Gases emissions, we are committed to taking the necessary actions. This includes customization of our trip itineraries to a point where it requires a minimal amount of carbon-emitting services like transportation. Moreover, we will prioritize the usage of newer vehicles, whose pollution tests have been timely analyzed and approved by the respective authorities

3. REMOVE

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is an essential step toward reaching our goal of net zero by 2050. As a small-scale tourism operator, we cannot promise any high-end technologies for removing carbon.

For this purpose, we will discard old and high carbon-emitting vehicles for transportation. Besides, we will promote hiking, walking, and trekking activities instead of tours that use vehicles. Furthermore, our itineraries are optimized in a way for the minimal possible emission.

However, we will be committed to cutting off high carbon-emitting services. For reference, we will prioritize hiking and trekking trips, which don’t require camping equipment, where fossil fuels are mostly used for the preparation of food.

4. Counterbalance

As a tour and trips provider, we acknowledge the fact that we require certain services which emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Such unavoidable emissions may include transportation, food, and other fossil fuel-consuming activities. For such emissions, we will incorporate traditional methods of carbon sequestration.

Since the beginning of our company in 2016, we have been actively taking part in plantation and reforestation projects organized by different governmental and non-governmental organizations. Besides being physically involved, we will be committed to involving ourselves in such activities, including monetary donations to such causes.

In the coming days, we will commit our agency to organize similar activities in remote destinations along with trekking and hiking trails. Moreover, we will prioritize destinations that are eco-friendly as per our commitment to responsible tourism. Besides, we will be committed to awareness campaigns in rural communities about the importance of de-carbonization.

5. Evolve and Collaborate

As our line of the industry requires us to collaborate with third-party service providers for transportation, accommodation, and other essentials, during most of our trips and tours, we will be constantly learning and adapting innovative means for cutting off carbon emissions.

As technology is advancing toward greener alternatives for energy worldwide, we, too, will be transitioning towards adopting new technologies. As the hype about electric vehicles and renewable energy is taking off worldwide, we will also be focused on integrating these alternatives.

The EVs are a comparatively newer trend here in Nepal, and the numbers of such service providers are very low, thus, it’ll take us time to integrate these means of transportation into our tours and trips. However, in the future, it is going to be more likely to collaborate with such a service provider, which totally depends on the fairer policies from the Government of Nepal.

Besides, we will put our time and effort into learning and implementing new means of reducing carbon emissions from a wide range of resources on the Internet. This includes the International and National organizations dedicated to sustainable climate action. We will commit ourselves to our Climate Action Plan, as outlined by the International Panel for Climate Change, in order to reach our declared goals of net zero.

This is our climate action plan for our Declaration of Climate Emergency. We are open to any further suggestions regarding our Climate action plan. If you have any queries, then kindly contact us.