Awareness

Climbing to the top of Big Daddy in the Namib Desert, driving though large open areas where animals are roaming freely in Damaraland, kayaking in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the seals in Walvis Bay or enjoying the authentic Namibian cuisine. Welcome to the Land of the Braves.

Tourism is one of the biggest and most important industries on our planet, with millions of families relying on it for their daily needs. We recognize our responsibility towards the places and people we visit.

The diversity of Namibia unites us and gives us the chance to explore, engage and experience the local cultures and communities and enhance your travel experience.

At TOSCO we endeavour to minimize negative impacts from the tourism industry and maximize positive impacts by working on three levels:

Economical
Social
Environmental

We raise public awareness about conservation and promote responsible travel in Namibia through different channels.

Responsible TOSCO contact person

Awareness Minister

Charlotte Hiernard

awareness@tosco.org

Information boards in National Parks.

Namib Naukluft National Park, Sesriem National Park and Skeleton Coast National Park

Responsible Travel brochures.

We designed Responsible Travel Brochures that we are distributing to different actors of the Tourism industry like Tour Operators, hotels and car rental companies, where they can share it with their travellers.

When visiting Namibia, or any other country, the travellers should be advised what can and what cannot be done during their trip. Unfortunately many travellers still don’t know how to behave responsibly in order to sustain the unique nature of Namibia and their actions, like driving off-road, can dangerously disturb the environment and even put someone’s life in danger.

Our Responsible Travel Brochure aims to inform all travellers how to travel responsibly!

Click here to check out our Responsible Travel Guide.

Click here to download 2019 TOSCO Responsible Travel Brochure – English version

Click here to download 2019 TOSCO Responsible Travel Brochure – German version

Every action has a consequence, leave nothing behind except respect and good experiences.

Desert Elephant pamphlets

Namibia’s desert-dwelling elephants are a source of great interest for tourists since there are only two populations of desert adapted elephants in the world (with Mali, North Africa)

They have adapted to their dry, semi-desert environment by having a smaller body mass with proportionally longer legs and seemingly larger feet than other elephants. Their physical attributes allow them to cross miles of sand dunes to reach water. They have even been filmed sliding down a dune face to drink at a pool in a desert oasis.

For the past few years, TOSCO has been working closely with Elephant Human Relations Aide (EHRA) developing Desert Elephant pamphlets for Tour Operators and travellers.

Any irresponsible or disrespectful behaviour toward the elephants can result in them becoming aggressive. To defend themselves, they might charge either you or other innocent people. Click here to download the Desert Elephant pamphlets on PDF.

Most recently, we have been developing pamphlets for local communities to teach more about these elephants because “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.” Baba Dioum.

Click here to download the English version of the Elephants Safety Brochure

Click here to download the Herero version of the Elephants Safety Brochure

Rhino pride campaign.

The idea behind this campaign is to teach about the crisis facing Namibia’s rhinos and to create awareness on this important topic. The goal is especially to reach the unemployed and out of school youth, living alongside rhinos in Kunene region (North-West Namibia), which is particularly vulnerable for being recruited into illegal activities such as wildlife crime. In order to reach the young audience, we organised concerts that presented special rhino songs to spread the message.

Pako Kids Magazine

Environmental and animal education connects us to the world around us, teaching us about both nature and environment. Environmental and animal education raises awareness of issues impacting the environment upon which we all depend, as well as actions we can take to improve and sustain it.

Whether we bring nature into the classroom, take students outside to learn, or find impromptu teachable moments on a nature walk with our families, environmental and animal education has many benefits for youth, educators, schools, and communities. As part of TOSCO Awareness program, we had partnership with PAKO Kids Magazine to help create awareness through the writing of environmental education articles that will be shared around all of Namibia.

The Khomas Environmental Education Programme (KEEP)

Khomas Environmental Education Program (KEEP) by GCF provides a learning platform outside the classroom, in nature with the goal of inspiring experiential learning and modeling environmental and wildlife stewardship.

The program targets primary school students in Windhoek, in particular students from disadvantaged schools who would benefit the most from an increased awareness of environmental issues as a change in behavior has the potential to improve their living conditions

Thanks to our members, TOSCO is able to organize the transport for the kids from Windhoek to Daan Viljoen.

Reusable water bottles

56,000,000 (56 million) plastic water bottles are used by tourists in Namibia every year (if we assume 4 bottles per day, for 14 days and 1 million tourists). We all know that every tour vehicle is stuffed with plastic bottles at the end of every day. Where do the empty bottles go? What we can say for sure is that only a small part gets recycled, most get burnt or buried. We, the tourism industry, want to protect our environment.

With the TOSCO branded water bottle you can not only achieve clean vehicles but your guests get a take away proof that you are a responsible operator.

Your guests can refill the bottle from taps (as we have good quality water in Namibia) or from canisters provided in the tour vehicle.

You can order your bottles from TOSCO, just contact us cleantravel@tosco.org.

Namibia Cleanup day Campaign.

In Namibia around 3000 tons of waste are produced on a daily basis. Although Namibia is considered to be one of the cleanest African countries, a lot of this waste unfortunately still ends up in the beautiful and unique environment where it often becomes harmful to the animals, plants and humans.

TOSCO organised the Clean-up campaign for all the tourism industry and for the schools in Namibia, which took place in the same day that National Clean up Campaign, 21 of September.