Climate Smart Commitment: 2025 Portfolio Annual Report
$1.1 Million Invested in 13 Organizations to Help Fight Climate Change
The sixth year of our Climate Smart Commitment was marked with both extreme optimism and sadness. Our optimism was fueled by the great results of our partners, but the shuttering of USAID and the loss of its life-saving programs — not to mention international goodwill — is sobering. The current US Administration and our fractured political landscape have placed the future of all domestic and international climate-related and development work at risk. So, as the world’s non-profit organizations scramble to fill the void left by the US’s abdicated leadership, we're hopeful that like-minded global citizens will help us preserve our planet, and steadfastly re-affirm our commitment to generate positive, lasting change through our program’s unique mix of hands-on work and advocacy.
We’re proud to grapple honestly with this important challenge. By designing our Climate Smart Commitment to pay back the environmental debt created by our travelers flying to Europe to join our bus tours, we believe we’ve acted ethically as a tour operator. (Plus, it’s simply good global citizenship.) Our goal: to creatively mitigate our carbon footprint by smartly investing a self-imposed carbon tax of $30 per tour member in climate-smart projects around the world (with roughly 35,000 travelers annually, that’s a total of about $1.1 million a year). Our two-fold mission: 1) help farmers in the developing world do their work more productively while contributing less to climate change and 2) help organizations advocate for government policies that take the threat of climate change more seriously and hold companies accountable for their climate damage.
Climate change and hunger are inexorably linked. The poorest people in the poorest countries are hit the hardest. Roughly half of the world’s population (4 billion out of 8 billion people) is made up of smallholder farmers and their families, and in their desperation to grow enough food to survive — and have some left over for the market — their farming practices contribute substantially to climate change. But with climate-smart technology and training, these hard-working farmers can grow more food to escape extreme poverty while substantially reducing their contribution to climate damage. Plus, because these programs provide farmers with the tools to be more productive, they help create financially independent small businesses. Plus, we creatively mitigate the carbon our travelers create while flying to Europe and back. To us, that’s a win-win-win.
The purpose of this report: to show our travelers what we’ve accomplished in the past year. The organizations we support are good examples of developmental work done right. They have restored biodiversity, reforested degraded land, saved entire forests from becoming firewood, prevented tons of carbon from being emitted, enabled farmers to escape extreme poverty, improved living conditions, educated thousands of women and girls — the world’s future leaders — and helped enact major climate legislation. They inspire us. Supporting them is a good and smart investment.
That’s why we’re proud to offer those who take our tours the peace-of-mind that our “self-imposed carbon tax” creatively mitigates the carbon that they create when they join us in Europe. And we’re honored to be the charity of choice for the thousands of like-minded independent travelers who have donated to the “Rick Steves’ Europe Climate Smart Fund” at the National Philanthropic Trust or through our annual Seasons Givings promotion. Together, we're making a difference.
Happy climate-smart travels,
Rick Steves and Craig Davidson
Learn more about our Climate Smart Commitment.
