About the Foundation
A permanent home for measurable tourism impact.
The Eco Travel Foundation NPC is a South African non-profit company created to help tourism better understand and address its climate impact while strengthening the ecosystems and communities on which the industry depends.
It provides an independent public-benefit home for Verified Impact and for the wider learning, capacity-building and collaborative work that grows from it.
Our purpose
Tourism should leave destinations stronger.
African tourism creates livelihoods, supports conservation economies and gives natural and cultural places tangible value. It also depends on energy, transport, food, water, infrastructure and complex supply chains that create environmental impacts.
The Foundation exists to help the industry engage honestly with both sides of that story.
Its role is to turn measurement into understanding, understanding into practical action and shared evidence into knowledge that can benefit more than one property or organisation.
We believe tourism’s positive contribution should be strengthened—not used to hide the impacts that still need to be measured and addressed.
Our vision
An African tourism sector that measurably reduces its climate impact while strengthening the wild ecosystems and communities that make the continent worth travelling through.
Our mission
To equip tourism properties, operators and travellers with credible climate information, practical learning and transparent ways to support positive action in the destinations they touch.
What the Foundation does
Connecting evidence, learning and action.
Verified Impact
Provide the programme home and public platform for property-level greenhouse-gas assessments, evidence quality, benchmarking and year-on-year trajectory.
Knowledge and capacity
Help tourism teams strengthen climate literacy, improve operational data and develop the ability to understand and manage their own impact over time.
Industry learning
Use anonymised and responsibly interpreted patterns from the growing evidence base to support better conversations, tools and decisions across African tourism.
Conservation and community action
Develop transparent ways to support credible community, wildlife and conservation initiatives connected to tourism destinations.
The Foundation’s future conservation and community funding mechanisms are still being developed. Specific funding commitments, eligibility rules or contribution models will only be published once formally adopted.
Our founding programme
Verified Impact is where the work becomes visible.
Verified Impact began as a practical climate-action pilot working with tourism properties to establish operational emissions baselines, assess evidence quality, build a benchmark and track progress over time.
The Eco Travel Foundation was established to give that work a long-term organisational home independent of a single project, commercial company or funding cycle.
Eco Travel Foundation
- Programme governance
- Public platform
- Participation framework
- Knowledge sharing
- Future programme development
ETC Africa
- Technical methodology
- Greenhouse-gas assessment
- Evidence review
- Calculation consistency
- Benchmark management
Participating properties
- Operational information
- Supporting evidence
- Internal capacity
- Reduction activity
- Ongoing reporting
The Foundation does not mark its own technical homework. Technical assessment responsibilities are kept distinct from the Foundation’s wider programme and public-benefit role.
How we intend to work
Principles before promises.
Evidence, not vague claims
Public communication should be supported by information that can be explained, traced and reviewed.
Transparency
We should communicate limitations, uncertainty and areas requiring improvement—not only the strongest results.
Local ownership
Properties, communities and conservation partners understand their own operating environments. The Foundation should support local leadership rather than impose remote solutions.
Capacity over dependency
Tools and learning should help tourism teams improve their own knowledge and reporting ability over time.
Coexistence
Healthy ecosystems, viable tourism businesses and resilient communities are interconnected rather than competing objectives.
Where we are now
Established with a long-term purpose. Still developing how best to deliver it.
The Eco Travel Foundation is legally established as a South African Non-Profit Company. Its founding programme, Verified Impact, is already working with operational tourism data and participating properties.
Other elements of the Foundation’s longer-term model—including membership, wider training, collaborative research and conservation or community funding mechanisms—are still being developed by the directors and programme partners.
Established
- The Eco Travel Foundation NPC
- A founding board of four directors
- Verified Impact as the founding programme
- A live property assessment and registry pilot
- Technical assessment support from ETC Africa
- A growing operational evidence base
In development
- The longer-term membership framework
- Wider industry learning and training
- Additional partnerships and funding
- Conservation and community support mechanisms
- Formal policies and public reporting structures
- Geographic and programme expansion
We are publishing the Foundation while it develops because transparency should begin at the start—not once every answer appears complete.
Governance
Responsible stewardship begins with clear roles.
The Eco Travel Foundation is governed by its directors in accordance with its responsibilities as a South African Non-Profit Company.
The board is responsible for protecting the Foundation’s purpose, overseeing its programmes and finances, managing conflicts of interest and ensuring that public-benefit priorities are not subordinated to commercial interests.
Purpose-led
Foundation resources and decisions should advance its public-benefit objectives.
Non-distribution
The Foundation is not established for private gain, and its income and assets are not distributable to directors except for properly authorised compensation for services actually rendered or reimbursement of legitimate expenses.
Conflict management
Directors and partners must disclose relevant interests and should not participate in decisions from which they or connected organisations may benefit improperly.
Accountability
Governance, programme decisions and financial management should be documented and subject to appropriate review as the Foundation develops.
Founding directors.
The founding board brings experience across climate and environmental practice, tourism, communications, health, community wellbeing and international development.
Duncan Pritchard
Director
Profile coming soon
Vinoth Liyanage
Director
Profile coming soon
Esther Ruempol
Director
Profile coming soon
Thirza de Jong
Director
Profile coming soon
Programme partners
Built through complementary roles.
The Foundation's work has grown through collaboration between tourism, climate, conservation and travel partners.
kimkim
Founding programme catalyst
Catalytic funding for the original Climate Action Pilot that allowed the work to begin with real tourism properties.
Wilderness Leadership School
Pilot implementation partner
Conservation leadership and implementation support during the development of the original pilot.
ETC Africa
Technical partner
Greenhouse-gas methodology, property assessments, evidence review, training and benchmark development.
Eco-Travel Boutique
Tourism and market partner
Property relationships, responsible-travel participation and connection between the programme and travellers.
The Foundation is designed to have an identity and public-benefit mandate distinct from any single funder, technical provider or commercial partner.
What comes next
Building beyond one pilot.
The Foundation’s immediate task is to consolidate what the Verified Impact pilot is teaching us: how tourism properties gather evidence, where operational emissions occur, what makes comparison meaningful and which tools help businesses improve.
From there, the Foundation aims to extend participation, strengthen shared industry knowledge and develop credible ways for tourism to support climate, conservation and community priorities.
Grow the evidence
Include more operating contexts and build more comparable reporting years.
Share the learning
Turn emerging patterns into practical resources, training and informed industry discussion.
Connect impact
Develop transparent partnerships that link tourism activity with credible conservation and community action.
Help shape the next chapter
A Foundation built through participation.
We welcome tourism properties, travel businesses, technical specialists, conservation organisations and aligned funders who want to help build a more credible response to tourism's environmental impact.
Measured. Benchmarked. Improving.