From call to action: a roadmap to sustainable conferences

Abstract

There have been numerous calls across the scientific community, in recent years, for research conferences to embrace sustainability. With growing public consciousness and the challenging context posed by climate change both economically, socially and for biodiversity, researchers should be leading the path towards sustainable event planning. In this article, we propose key performances indicators that not only prioritize environmental goals, but also integrate socio-economic considerations at the roots of the planning cycle. We further discuss the added risks and remaining barriers, at the host organisation and destination levels, to plan a sustainable event. By changing the way that research conferences are organized, the scientific community can incorporate their values, knowledge and passion to strengthen existing standards and frameworks. We hope that, as event sustainability becomes more salient and institutions more prone to sharing lessons learned, sustainable events become the norm for all research conferences and meetings.

More hot air: measuring the paradox of European ecology conferences

“…Estimating CO 2 emissions is an important starting point, although it is difficult to translate CO 2 emissions to actual environmental impact. There have been calls to make conferences carbon-neutral (Bossdorf et al, 2010), and a small number of papers have started to address this issue with calls for environmental policies (Cugniere et al, 2020; Holden et al, 2017), virtual conferencing (Fraser et al, 2017; Rubinger et al, 2020) and choice of mode of travel (Fois et al, 2016). The carbon footprints of specific conferences have been calculated (e.g.…”