O2E Ethical Standards
Oceans 2 Earth's published set of requirements every partner conservation project must meet: animal welfare, conservation value, community context, volunteer role clarity, and fee transparency.
Our standards
Ethical volunteering
Volunteering built around genuine contribution to conservation work, chosen carefully, prepared for honestly, and led by local expertise, rather than around the volunteer's experience.
Ethical Travel Calculators
Measure Your Ethical Travel Impact with Our Industry-Leading Calculators!
Boost Your Ethical Travel Game with “GreenGauge” & “EthicCheck”
Discover the true impact of your volunteer travel choices and ensure your efforts align with the highest ethical standards. Our GreenGauge: Are You an Ethical Volunteer Traveller? evaluates the environmental, social, and cultural footprint of your journey. Meanwhile, EthicCheck: Rate the Ethics of Your Volunteer Project empowers you to assess and choose projects that make a genuine, lasting difference for animals, communities, and the planet. Start Your Ethical Check-Up Now
Ethical volunteering exists to make volunteer labour useful to a conservation programme instead of decorative. It sets the test a placement must pass before a person, and a fee, is added to it.
O2E standards
O2E Wildlife Code
Oceans 2 Earth's code for how volunteers behave around wildlife: observing from a distance, never feeding or disturbing animals, protecting their habitat, and never treating animals as entertainment.
O2E Carbon Reduction Program
Oceans 2 Earth's program for offsetting the carbon emissions of volunteer travel and of the charity's own operations by protecting wilderness land in trust with Forever Wild.
Defined terms
Ethical Conservation Travel
Travel whose primary purpose is contributing to conservation work under ethical standards, not sightseeing with a conservation label.
Voluntourism
Commercial volunteer travel that centres the traveller's experience, often through staged animal encounters, vague impact claims and opaque fees, and the practice Oceans 2 Earth defines itself against.
Transparent Volunteer Fees
Oceans 2 Earth's practice of itemising where a volunteer's fee goes: logistics, safety, training, community partnerships, and ongoing project work.
Ethical Program Screening
Oceans 2 Earth's selection process that admits only conservation-first placements meeting the O2E Ethical Standards.
Volunteer Preparation
Oceans 2 Earth's pre-departure guidance that readies a volunteer to arrive informed, respectful and useful.
How we categorise placements
Destination
- Australia
- Indonesia
- Thailand
- Rest of World
Get the 5-day ethical volunteering course
One short email a day. How to spot a genuine project, what fees really pay for, and how to prepare.