Offset your travel carbon emissions

Conservation of the environment and welfare of the local communities is at the heart of Himalayan Ecotourism's mission.
Since our inception in 2014, we are using ecotourism as an instrument to promote sustainable development in the Himalayas. Our community-based social enterprise is a unique award-winning business model.

In 2019, our local collaborators, the cooperative members decided to launch a tree plantation project in the barren lands of the ecozone of the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP). This has shown us that our social enterprise model works well as it ultimately led to a situation where the locals became responsible and confident enough to initiate a regeneration project by themselves.
Read more about it here.
We obviously supported their initiative by dedicating a substantial part of our profits to the project.

As the covid-19 pandemic spread over the world, we were left with no visitor, and hence, a zero income 2020 season.
Fortunately, thanks to private donations, we were able to continue implementing the project.
As tourism is the main source of funds for our social and conservation project, and as tourism will be down for an unknown period of time, we were forced to find alternate sources of income for our social enterprise.
By protecting and regenerating the Himalayan forests suffering from fast deterioration processes, not only we contribute to the long term welfare of the local community but we also sequestrate huge amounts of atmospheric carbon.

Therefore, we decided that sequestration of carbon will be the alternate source of revenue to support our efforts to work for sustainable development in the Himalayas.

About one third of cooperative members live in a badly deteriorated area near the village Pekhri in the ecozone of the GHNP.
The members themselves decided that they should start the regeneration project in that particular area.
Two square kilometres have been marked out as the initial project area.

We divided the area into four different categories of lands where we work for different objectives with different strategies. These categories of land help us to optimize the efficiency of the project.
To devise these categories we took the following parameters into consideration :

    Local ecology benefits (no more forest fires, plantation of indigenous species, erosion, habitat for wildlife, etc.)
    Community benefits (Fuelwood, fruit trees, fodder, dedicated land for grazing, non-timber forest produces, local climate, etc.)
    Long-term carbon sequestration

The different categories are :

   1. Village forest. Adjacent the village areas. Fenced and protected from forest fires. Planted with nursery grown trees for fruits, fodder and other benefits for the villagers.
   2. Silvopastoral land. Within 15 minutes walking distance from the villages. No fence, but protected from forest fires. Fast growing trees for fodder and fuelwood. The ground level is maintained for allowing good grasses to grow (grazing).
   3. Assisted natural regeneration land. Further from the villages. No fence, but protected from forest fires. Direct seeding of indigenous tree species. No grazing allowed. This category is mostly to enhance the quality of the natural ecosystems.
   4. The remaining area is only protected from forest fires. Hence the naturally sequestrated carbon is kept into the ground. controlled grazing allowed.

When the management of the first 2 square kilometres will be funded, the same programme will be replicated near the villages of other cooperative members.