Climate protection
Climate protection and a trip to Antarctica – unfortunately, these intentions are actually in contradiction.
Travel in general needs to be examined critically: Researchers at the University of Sydney have calculated that global tourism is responsible for around eight percent of all human CO2 emissions.
Although we are not planning a CO2-emission-intensive voyage with a huge motorized cruise ship, and with Sailing SOUTH 2024 we will travel mostly under sail, but even a sailing trip cannot be realized without any CO2 footprint – let alone coming us as a crew from Central Europe to the other end of the world.
Making the outward and return journey on a sailing boat too would be a wish and suitable idea, but unfortunately it is not an alternative in terms of time and finances.
Nevertheless, we want to go on this journey as responsibly as possible and make our contribution to climate protection and will offset unavoidable emissions* by financially supporting atmosfair’s climate protection projects (projects in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energies and environmental education) with a 100% compensation contribution.
We know: completely avoiding CO2 emissions is always the best solution, significantly reducing them must be a committed goal, and at least compensating for them should be a duty of all of us.
* According to the emissions calculator from atmosfair, climate-relevant emissions of around 8,631 kg are produced for the outward and return flight of one person. (Thereof approx. 2,900 kg CO2 and another approx. 5,700 kg other climate-relevant emissions) This corresponds to almost six times the climate-friendly annual budget of a person. In this case the compensation contribution of 200 Euros seems comparatively small.
Cooperation
Compensation is one thing, giving something back is another.
That’s why we want to try to support the Polar Citizen Science Collective during our journey and within our means.
The Polar Citizen Science Collective creates and expands opportunities for research and public education, leveraging the reach of polar travelers to enhance understanding and protection of the polar regions. High costs and the complexity of accessing the often remote areas are often prohibitive to Arctic and Antarctic research. The aim of the Polar Citizen Science Collective is to support the polar science community by involving and engaging travelers in data collection projects for scientific purposes.
These include, for example, the Happywhale, Southern Ocean Seabird Surveys or South Georgia Big Seaweed Search project series.
