The Reef-World Foundation Annual Report 2019-2020

Promoting an environmental focus during
the pandemic
It will be no surprise to hear that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted our fieldwork and
plans as much as it has done for businesses and organisations all over the world. Here
at Reef-World, we knew this would be a tough time for the marine tourism sector and
that, as a collaborative network we would need to work together to weather this storm as
best we can. We knew resilience would be key – not only for coral reefs but also for the
sector – and that we needed to take the opportunity provided by global travel restrictions
to pause and prepare; ready to come out stronger.
Throughout this period, we have been working tirelessly to help the industry keep an
environmental strategy high on its agenda despite the many changes taking place for
travel businesses as a result of the crisis. We launched new Green Fins guidelines which
outline how to deal with chemical cleaning agents in an environmentally friendly way
and waived our usual £20 fee for the Green Fins Operational Handbook (encouraging
operators to instead ‘pay what you can’).
“WE APPRECIATE THAT THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY TOUGH TIME FOR THE DIVING
AND SNORKELLING INDUSTRY. THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC HAS MANY
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR MANY PEOPLE BUT THERE ARE SILVER
LININGS INCLUDING THE POTENTIAL TO ‘REDEFINE’ THE TOURISM INDUSTRY
AND USE THIS DOWNTIME TO PUT BETTER ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES IN
PLACE; ESPECIALLY SINCE MORE AND MORE TOURISTS ARE DEMANDING
SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES FROM THEIR PROVIDERS.”
Chloe Harvey, Director, Reef-World
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