A path to decolonization? Reducing air travel and resource consumption in higher education

Nevins, Joseph; Allen, Stephen; Watson, Matt

doi:10.1016/j.tbs.2021.09.012

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…In the Labos 1point5 survey, 68% of respondents declared that they have a more favorable opinion regarding the use of videoconferencing now than before the first lockdown in France (March 2020). As illustrated by several studies, videoconferencing has a highly positive impact on travel-related GHG emissions [2,33] but also on diversity, equity, and inclusion [34,35] in conferences. The reduction of air travel in academia can thus be articulated with a more equitable and more sustainable distribution of scientific visibility, to include early-career researchers, or researchers with family or medical constraints, or working in countries from which it is complicated, for visa or budget reasons, to travel [36].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…where o(i) is the observed count for an age or sex category i (e.g. the number of individuals aged between [30][31][32][33][34][35] among the CNRS employees of the survey dataset and e(i) is the expected value, computed using the information from the annual report of CNRS, which provides the gender and age distribution of its employees. Residual z i above 0 indicates that category i is overrepresented in the survey dataset, while z i < 0 indicates underrepresentation.…”

Section: Non-response Biasesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The carbon footprint of scientific visibility

Berné

Agier

Hardy

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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In face of global warming, academics have begun to consider and analyze the environmental and carbon footprints associated with their professional activity. Among the several sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from research activities, air travel - one of the most visible and unequally distributed fraction of this footprint - has received much attention. Of particular interest is the question of how air travel may be related to scientific success or visibility as defined by current academic evaluation norms, notably bibliometric indicators. Existing studies, conducted over a small sample of individuals or within specific disciplines, have failed to demonstrate the existence of an association between bibliometric indicators and the frequency of air travel. Here, using a comprehensive dataset aggregating the answers from over 6000 respondents to a survey sent to randomly selected scientists and staff across all research disciplines in France, we show that a strong publication rate and h}-index are significantly associated with higher individual air travel GHG emissions. This relationship is robust to the inclusion of the effects of gender, career stage and disciplines. Our results indicate that evaluation through bibliometric indicators favors individuals who adopt practices that are less sustainable.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Non-response Biasesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The carbon footprint of scientific visibility

Berné

Agier

Hardy

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…At the individual level, academics face cognitive dissonance between attitudes and behaviours because they are aware of the climate crisis, feel “flight shame” and intend to lead by example to fight climate change (Nevins et al , 2022; Kreil, 2021; Schrems and Upham, 2020). However, academics are concerned that reducing air travel will harm their research, productivity, reputation and competitiveness (Kreil, 2021; Tseng et al , 2022; Eriksson et al , 2020).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards post-COVID-19 responsible academic air travel

Tseng¹,

Higham²,

Lee³

2023

IJSHE

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Purpose This study aims to shape the future of academic air travel practices by identifying the challenges between existing air travel-related policies and practicing responsible air travel. Design/methodology/approach With increasing concern over global warming, many institutions have implemented sustainability programmes to tackle carbon emissions and create sustainable practices. COVID-19 has resulted in many universities seizing the opportunity to maintain reduced levels of academic air travel emissions. However, the outdated travel-related policies have caused much scope for tension arising from the policy gap between pre-COVID university travel policies and academics' intentions to reduce their air travel emissions. This study interviewed academics at the University of Otago (New Zealand) to elicit detailed narratives of their perceptions of the university’s air travel-related policies, generating co-created and mutually informative insights. Findings The present programme of in-depth interviews with academic staff revealed that while most staff accept the need to reduce air travel emissions, they face challenges concerning career advancement, equity and equality issues. Universities will need to evolve their travel-related policies to address these challenges, enabling academics to adopt new practices that do not unreasonably disadvantage themselves, their disciplines or their institutions. Originality/value The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the institutional policy challenges to responsible academic air travel and the need for the current policy gap to be resolved. The authors propose directions for a responsible academic air travel future that will require both top-down and bottom-up approaches involving academics and institutions.

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“…For example, according to Arsenault et al [8] ,the University of Montreux accounts for 30% of the institution’s total carbon emissions due to academic air travel. Reducing carbon emissions from air travel would be the most effective and quickest way for higher education to reduce carbon emissions [32] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%