Justin Francis OBE

I am the co-founder and Chair of Responsible Travel, nature lead at the U.K. Government’s Council for Sustainable Business, Chair of funding platform Projects for Nature and a Director of Saruni Basecamp Safaris in Kenya. In the mid 1990’s at The Body Shop I helped launch environmentally friendly ranges, including Hemp; campaigned against testing cosmetics on animals (which became law) and for human rights in the ‘Make your Mark’ campaign supported by the Dalai Lama and Radiohead. Responsible Travel is the world’s first and largest responsible holiday company, which I co-founded in 2000. We have booked over 200,000 customers and offer 6000 carefully screened trips and over 700 online travel guides to destinations and activities, that have been viewed over 20m times. Through our ‘Trip for a Trip’ scheme we have funded days trips for 7500 children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Responsible Travel has led over 20 campaigns on issues ranging from over tourism to voluntary carbon offsets and cetaceans in captivity. More recently we have set goals and are working with our partners on 17 actions for a low carbon, nature positive, fair and just future. I founded the World Responsible Tourism Awards in 2004, which I continue to judge, and was a founding trustee of The Travel Foundation. Since 2018 I’ve been the nature lead at the UK Government’s Council for Sustainable Business, advising Ministers in the Department for the Environment. In this role I helped pass the biodiversity net gain legislation, which mandates that housing developers provide a 10% biodiversity net gain by the end of the development; and developed a nature handbook for business (subsequently developed by the World Economic Forum); and a nature positive campaign and business leaders event for COP26 in Glasgow at which Al Gore spoke. Since November 2023 I’ve chaired Projects for Nature, a funding platform for nature projects in England which is a partnership between the Department for the Environment (DEFRA), Environment Agency, Natural England, Crowdfunder and Accenture, which has so far raised £700,000 from business for conservation. Since 2011 I’ve been a Board Director of Saruni Basecamp, a safari company based in Kenya that partners with the indigenous Maasai and Samburu communities to operate 12 lodges and camps in community wildlife conservancies. The business helps protect over 1m acres of land for communities, carbon and biodiversity. Listen to my story here https://kiwanotourism.com/stories/the-tourism-reset-podcast-episode-25/