Decarbonisation

Part 1: Reducing the carbon footprint of academic conferences (prof. dr. Antoine Amarilli)

In many academic fields, researchers routinely travel around the world multiple times per year to participate to academic conferences and exchange ideas with their peers. However, this model now proves unsustainable: international travel emits greenhouse gases and contributes to the ongoing climate crisis. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely restricted travel and forced many conferences to experiment with other formats than in-person attendance. We are now at a turning point, where physical conferences become possible again, and conference organizers must choose what to keep from pre-COVID practices in light of recent developments. Which choices can they make to limit their carbon footprint?

This talk will review the climate crisis, the impact of international travel, and the past, current, and future practices in organizing academic conferences, with a focus on the field of computer science. We will also explain what makes conferences so essential in the current practices of academia, and what are the alternatives. We will also review examples of climate-themed events at conferences, new experimental conference formats, and initiatives such as TCS4F https://tcs4f.org/.

Part 2: Higher education and the climate crisis (prof. dr. Tristan McCowan)

It is widely recognised that universities are key players in humanity’s response to the climate crisis. Yet it is rarely clear exactly how universities do impact climate change, and as a result, policies and strategies for transforming the sector lack a firm basis. Climate scientists have played an important role through enhancing knowledge of the causes and potential impacts of the changing climate and in raising public awareness, and there is increasing attention to incorporation of climate within undergraduate courses. Furthermore, universities play important roles through community engagement programmes, and within their campuses generate their own emissions and carry out regeneration activities. But what influence do these activities have on mitigation and adaptation, and how should universities balance the different functions? This lecture explores the complex relationship between higher education and climate change and the political, economic and epistemic factors that influence it. It provides practical examples of the often-inspiring initiatives carried out in universities in Africa, Latin America and the Pacific, even in resource-constrained contexts. It is argued that we need to open spaces for bottom-up action, allowing students, teaching staff and administrative staff to innovate and mobilise to make possible the transformation towards a sustainable future.