Stewardship

Tracking the long-term impacts of stewardship: A Call to Action

A World-leading study

Antarctica needs friends. In the face of a looming climate crisis, this is truer than ever: the southern polar region urgently requires broad-based support from connected, engaged, and collaborative communities around the world. The number of people visitingAntarctica as tourists has grown exponentially in the last decade. Each one of these travellers has the potential to become a friend to the far south, and acatalyst for climate action, by contributing to the region’s protection when they return home. This concept is known as stewardship.

The long-term impacts of transformative journeys upon individual’s pro-environmental actions have rarely been studied.

In this world-first study, researchers from the University of Tasmania will follow the journey of travellers on board the World Navigator during their time in Antarctica and for 18 months after. Interested passengers will be invited to take part in longitudinal research that will explore, through interview and documentary-style methods, the impacts that a journey south has upon their sense of self, their awareness of climate change and the actions that they take as leaders upon their return.

This study will allow us to determine if and how change manifests in leadership over the long-term. Through this study, we hope to develop an evidence-based understanding of the impact that leadership programs have upon leaders’ attitudes and actions towards climate change, via their business practice, upon their return.  

Join us in our work

We believe this research is vitally important. If leaders can encourage behaviour change through their business and staff, this could have a profound impact on abating the effects of climate change. That’s why Wonder and Wander have supported a researcher from the University of Tasmania to conduct fieldwork on the World Navigator in March 2024.

The Antarctic Tourism Program members at the University of Tasmania are conducting vital research into the growth, impacts and outcomes of tourism in Antarctica.  The goal of the Antarctic Tourism Program is to encourage sustainable forms of tourism and experience that create positive change amongst guests when they return home.

Exciting progress has been being made byUTAS Antarctic Tourism Program, with the group having proved that transformation in attitudes can occur after tourists experience the effects of climate change. However, what remains to be understood is whether behaviour change occurs and if so, at what point after the journey, in what form and how long this behaviour change endures. It is also largely unknown how leaders can act as catalysts for change following their attendance at transformative leadership events.

This research project is being led by social scientists Associate Professor Anne Hardy and Professor Nicholas Farrelly in collaboration with Wonder and Wander.

‍