Measuring Our Impact

As a registered social travel enterprise, our approach is not to run the business solely on the basis of a financial bottom line. We’re not a multi-country specialist, Mongolia is our home, and not only do we create Mongolian experiences that deliver something useful to the local families and projects we work in long-term local community partnership with but we also consider the social equity of the people we employ. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), we need to drastically decrease our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions until 2030, with a focus on Carbon Dioxide emissions, in order to keep the average temperature increase below 1.5oC or 2oC, in reference to the temperature in pre-industrial levels.

We’re a small company (100-150 travellers per year) with limited resources, time, and finances but we try hard to make good decisions. That’s why in 2021 we became a member of Tourism Declares A Climate Emergency and a signatory of The Glasgow Declaration – committing to a decade of tourism climate action including:

Supporting the global commitment to halve emissions by 2030 and reach Net Zero as soon as possible before 2050;
Delivering a climate action plan within 12 months of becoming a signatory (or updating existing plans), and beginning implementing them;
Aligning our plans with the five pathways of the Declaration (Measure, Decarbonise, Regenerate, Collaborate, Finance) to accelerate and coordinate climate action in tourism.
Reporting publicly on an annual basis on progress against interim and long-term targets, as well as on actions being taken.

How We Are Measuring Our Impact

As mentioned, we’re small in size and available resources and do not have an in-house team who can effectively work on decarbonisation and reduction strategies. Therefore, our first challenge is how to measure.

Although there are carbon consultancy companies available to do a private carbon audit, these are way outside of the budget of a small independent company such as ourselves.
There are many online carbon calculators available but a majority are for individuals or for general businesses rather than tourism-specific companies.
We wanted an accurate footprint analysis whilst also keeping the process manageable and achievable. Of the limited carbon calculators available to small tourism companies with a restricted budget we have signed up with the carbon calculator tool Carmacal – specifically designed for tour operators and the 2017 winner of the UNWTO Award for Innovation in Research and Technology.
However, there are limitations with this online tool in the fact that – like most online carbon calculators – you can only measure transport and accommodation and a few very specific activities. But, the main contributors to carbon footprints are food, consumption, transportation, and energy, and all are heavily utilised during a tourism experience.
As a result, Jess has been working with postgraduate student Kelly Hirschbuehler from the Responsible Tourism Management Postgraduate Course of Leeds Beckett University in the UK – the only responsible tourism management MSc certified by the UNWTO – looking at how we can measure the carbon emissions of meals on tour as well as the carbon footprint of our office as well as certain tour activities.
Using the calculations provided by Kelly in her research project we can now better calculate – not perfectly but still better – the overall carbon footprint of each trip we run.
Having completed the carbon measurement for each experience we offer, we will then balance the footprint for each by purchasing Plan Vivo Foundation carbon certificates which are used to support the Plan Vivo Mongolian Nomad Project – working in partnership with the Mongolian Society of Range Management.
Once each trip we offer has this carbon footprint breakdown, it will give us a framework from which we can work to identify ways we can improve and further reduce carbon across our trips. Secondly, we will offset the carbon footprint of each trip into the Mongolian Carbon Project.

Don’t International Flights Have The Biggest Impact?

We focus solely on Mongolia – a country where a majority of our guests have no option but to fly to. However, as we don’t book flights, have customers from all corners of the world, and have no way of reliably knowing their travel plans, we simply can’t include them in our carbon footprint measurements. But, air travel has a massive carbon footprint and although carbon offsets are far from imperfect and don’t tackle the real issue the world faces – to reduce emissions – they do make a difference. Also, tourism employs 1 in 10 people globally (pre-Covid) and tourism – when done responsibly – can be a force for good growth and positive change. It can support economic development, help to protect the environment, sustain local communities, and contribute to meaningful exchange.

These are reasons we have partnered with C-Level and our ‘Balance My Flight’ calculator (link) allows our guests to measure and mitigate the carbon emitted by their international flight. The carbon offsetting payment will be invested in Plan Vivo Certificates – environmental service certificates, each representing the reduction or avoidance of one metric tonne of carbon dioxide into the Mongolian Carbon Project (link).

Sustainable Development Goals | Our Financial, Environmental And Human Impact

At the end of September 2015, the United Nations adopted a global agenda to end poverty, inequality, and climate change. 17 Sustainable Development Goals have been set to make the world a better place by 2030.

Sustainable Development Goals

Tourism has the potential to contribute, directly or indirectly, and therefore can and must play a significant role in delivering the SDGs which cover inequality, conserving and preserving the planet’s fragile ecosystems, clean drinking water, tackling climate change, and sustainable energy. (Tourism For SDGs). We use six of the SDGs (see further down the page) to help provide a framework for measuring our financial, environmental, and human impact in relation to each of the families and projects we work in long-term local community partnership with. We also aim to measure our impact on each of the national parks or nature reserves where we run tours in Mongolia but this is a long-term goal.

Following are a few examples of the impact measurements we make in relation to each of the families we work in long-term local community partnership with:

The location of each family
The usage of the family toilet (most are long-drops)
Number of EL guests hosted by each family in low season
Number of EL guests hosted by each family in peak season
The variety of ways in which we support each family
The number of extended treks we arrange with the family including the route as well as the type of trek (foot, camel, horse, or yak cart)

The Six SDGs We Use As A Framework For Measuring Our Financial, Environmental, And Human Impact

SDG 5 – GENDER EQUALITY

Tourism has the potential to contribute to greater gender equality and the empowerment of women. Women’s participation in the Mongolian economy has decreased on average by 10% over the past 20 years while men’s labour participation has remained relatively stable with a slight 2% decrease. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic has not only exacerbated the variety of issues women face in Mongolia, but has brought about a new set of challenges. For example, one in three women experience domestic violence perpetrated by their intimate partners in Mongolia, and there has been a drastic increase in these rates since the pandemic began.

[Asia Foundation Women’s Economic Empowerment Project In Mongolia]

At EL, we run our free seasonal training and development programme for Mongolian women. We invest in their future and create long-term employment opportunities for them working as trip assistants on the Mongolian experiences that we run.

SDG 8 – DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

Goal 8 focuses on decent long-term stable work and income-earning opportunities for all and sustainable economic growth that benefits the entire community. The UN has defined 12 Targets for SDG 8 including target 8.9: Promote beneficial and sustainable tourism that promotes local culture and products.

The community-based tourism (CBT) that we practice helps to support, but not displace, local livelihoods, brings empowerment to local people and enables them to share the benefits of our tourism. Our form of CBT also helps to strengthen cultural identity. One example, is through our support of families and projects promoting traditional arts and crafts – https://www.eternal-landscapes.co.uk/who-we-are/

SDG 12 – RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION

Goal 12 is about sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources leading to a better quality of life for all. This includes substantially reducing waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.

Mongolia practices commingled waste collection and a majority of the waste collected is buried. There are issues with the open dumping and open burning of waste causing soil, water and air pollution. Sorting and recycling are undertaken by the private sector and is on an informal scale. However, within Ulaanbaatar there are a few small and medium scale recycling plants in operation and the Mongolia National Recycling Association (MNRA – founded in 2005) has numerous city-wide centres.

[Ulaanbaatar Waste Management Improvement Strategy and Action Plan • 2017–2030]

SDG 12 calls on us to sustainably manage and efficiently utilise natural resources therefore reducing our ecological footprint to allow for the regeneration of natural resources on which human life and biodiversity depends. This is one reason why we promote low season travel to Mongolia to help spread our tourism impact more evenly. We also look at the meals we provide and our food waste and have formed a partnership with Water-To-Go – providing our guests with filtered re-usable water bottles.

SDG 13 – CLIMATE ACTION

Tourism contributes to climate change and should play a leading role in the global response to combating climate change and its impacts. By reducing its carbon footprint tourism can help tackle one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

The annual mean air temperature of Mongolia has increased by 2.07°C from 1940 to 2014. The ten warmest years in the last 70 years have occurred since 1997. In this period, annual precipitation has decreased and the seasonal rainfall pattern has changed. Some of the key impacts and vulnerabilities include:

Approximately 70% of pastoral land has degraded.
The drying up of lakes, rivers and springs and melting of glaciers has intensified in the last decade.
Water temperature and evaporation are continuously increasing, leading to declining water resources.
The intensification of dry climatic conditions cause the increase of the frequency of forest and steppe fires, the occurrence and the intensity of forest insect and pest outbreaks.

[UNDP Feasibility Study Pasture Use Fee Baseline Study Report]

It is well documented that the tourism industry is a major contributor to global carbon emissions which are a major part of the climate emergency. As a tourism business – especially one working in Mongolia, a country where a majority of our guests have no option but to fly to – we have a moral responsibility to make sure the way we work is as sustainable as possible. As well as working towards measuring and balancing the carbon footprint of our tours and our operations we worked in partnership with C-Level to create a ‘balance my flight’ calculator for the EL website, we also highlight what airlines that fly into Ulaanbaatar rank best for carbon efficiency (through atmosfair). And we are a signatory of The Glasgow Declaration.

SDG 14 – LIFE BELOW WATER

SDG 14 focuses on healthy seas, oceans and rivers. Although Mongolia is land-locked, the increase in single-use plastic used in tourism in the country has resulted in fragments and films of consumer plastics (including plastic bottles, fishing gear and plastic bags) being found in Lake Khovsgol – Mongolia’s largest freshwater lake (representing 70% of Mongolia’s fresh water and 1% of the planet’s fresh water).

[Free, C.M., et al. High-levels of microplastic pollution in a large, remote, mountain lake. Mar. Pollut. Bull. (2014), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.06.001]

Since Day One we have never purchased bottled drinking water for our guests. However, we now go one step further in our fight against single use plastic with our partnership with Water-To-Go – providing our guests with a 15% discount off their filtered, reusable water bottles. We have also created our Mini Plastic Free Mongolia Challenge as a way to persuade both our guests and team not to use single use plastics as these often end up in very small pieces on the shoreline of Mongolia’s lakes – therefore feeding into its rivers.

SDG 15 – LIFE ON LAND

SDG 15 focuses on sustainably managing forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss. In Mongolia, soil degradation has become one of the biggest challenging environmental issues. An assessment of desertification and land degradation in Mongolia, made by Mongolian researchers in 2015, showed that 76.9% of the total area was under desertification and land degradation processes.

[Darbalaeva, Darima & Mikheeva, Anna & Zhamyanova, Yulia. (2020). The socio-economic consequences of the desertification processes in Mongolia.]

Our form of tourism in Mongolia is all about small-scale – from our number of bookings per year to a maximum group size of six. We have also created our Sustainable Tourism Strategy – a long-term project looking at 11 specific areas and how we can reduce any negative impact. The 11 areas include our water usage and our use of plastic.