Seven years does not seem to be enough time in which to completely change a game; and yet that is how long it’s taken for the African safari industry to go from being noticeably brown to convincingly green. It is also the length of time since Colin Bell and I conducted an extensive survey of 250 safari camps across the continent — for the Africa’s Finest project (www.africas.inest.co.za) — looking for the 50 greenest ones. Back then it was hard to find 50. I would say fewer than five per cent of lodges at that time used solar power; most were collecting and burning fallen wood in donkey boilers to make hot water. But in the intervening years, with the cost of solar rapidly dropping and the fact that most safari areas are located so far off any national or regional power grid, the transition has been less than painful. Now, I’d bet five per cent or fewer have not converted entirely to solar power. Although that is probably the biggest single factor as to whether or not a lodge is truly green, it is hardly the only one.
Today the biggest concern of guests seems to be airconditioning. In short, if a place has a full system it, and you, should not be there. It gets pretty hot in some places, very hot at times, but we don’t go to the bush to get pampered — or rather, we should not. Full-on aircon is just so power hungry it’s almost impossible to run off anything but big generators or mains power.