Most scientists and academics believe that their work is for the public good. We observe, describe and experiment to produce knowledge that we fondly imagine will be used to improve health and human happiness. We think of this as contributing to social sustainability. But what if, in the course of developing new understandings and strategies to improve life on earth, scientists actually contribute to global demise?

Academics are addicted to conferences and international meetings. We are one of the most mobile of professions. We regularly visit colleagues in other universities across the world. We hold international seminars for PhD students, meetings of research groups and conferences where we gain and disseminate new knowledge, foster collaboration, spread good practice and try to reduce knowledge and practice inequalities. Want a promotion? Then demonstrate your international credentials to your employer through lists of invited international conference presentations.

This ‘conferencing’ is a heady drug. But like all drugs, behind the apparent euphoria of consumption is the harsh reality of addiction. There is a cost to academic travel, and it is the planet that bears the brunt of it.

Academics are part of the ‘polluter elite’. They travel more frequently than the average citizen. They visit countries further afield than most people heading off on an annual vacation. Greenhouse gas emissions attributable to academic travel can be as much as 35% of the overall carbon cost of knowledge production, or a whopping 22% of the total emissions of a single university. In our study here, we found that one modest event of between one to two week’s duration, designed to educate a group of less than 100 PhD students from across Europe, emitted as much greenhouse gas as 40 individual European citizen’s total annual emissions measured against the European Union’s 2030 emissions target.

One factor drove this terrifying emissions profile – the distance travelled by participants to the event site. We studied two events and found that the one held on the geographical periphery of Europe was associated with almost 2.5 times more emissions than an event held centrally. Despite the best efforts of event hosts to decarbonise their event spaces, hotels and meal options, these factors contributed as little as 18% of the total. The more remote the location, the greater the damage done to the environment. Travel was the source, and aviation the culprit.

The irony of scientists acting as ‘knowledge brokers’ with significant influence in society and on policy makers, whilst simultaneously contributing substantially to planetary collapse should not be understated. Many academics are acutely aware that they ought to take action to reduce their environmentally damaging activities, and are conscious that they will rapidly lose public credibility if their own behaviours are in sharp contrast to their scientific philosophies. However, these same researchers find it very difficult to actually make radical changes to their own behaviours. Change is hard to do and even harder to maintain.

So we used our data to propose a behaviour change framework, one that is designed to facilitate significant reductions in the carbon footprints of international academic exchange. We mapped our data against a framework which has had considerable success in helping people with long term health conditions adopt behaviours that will reduce and mitigate the impact of their illnesses. This ‘COM-B’ framework postulates that for individuals to change their Behaviour they need the Capability to do so, along with the Opportunity and personal Motivation. Illustrating this model is the ‘behaviour change wheel’, in which specific strategies including policy action are identified to boost capability, opportunity and motivation, thereby enabling the desired behaviour change. 

The great advantage of this approach is that for the first time we have been able to integrate measures that academic societies and organisations can take, with personal actions adopted by academics themselves. For example, if organisations choose an event venue that is central to the radial distribution of potential participants’ home towns, and where plentiful ground based travel options are available, many participants will have the opportunity to choose less polluting ground based travel options. 

Nonetheless, in order to avail themselves of such opportunities, participants may need additional information and support to boost their capabilities. This may mean information on how to put together a cross-border rail journey – never as straightforward as booking a direct flight. Organisers can also provide financial inducements such as reductions in event registration fees for those taking less polluting journeys, given that the majority of routes between major European cities are as much as 10-30 times more expensive by rail than by aeroplane.

However, even with the opportunity and personally enhanced capabilities, evidence from the behaviour change literature tells us that participants will need motivating to take a less polluting travel decision. Motivational strategies include giving potential participants hard information on what their travel (and dietary) choices will mean in terms of personal emissions. Carbon calculators can be included in registration forms, as can copies of organisations’ sustainability policies. Again, financial incentives can act as a motivational as well as a capability enhancing strategy.

One additional point we must acknowledge is that interventions to reduce GHG emissions by academics attending events organised by academic societies exist in a context dominated by an academic culture of collaboration and internationalisation. Promotion and remuneration criteria set by universities include international collaboration – particularly for those wanting to progress to the professoriate – who are, therefore, incentivised to attend and organise global meetings and conferences. One catalytic action that could be undertaken by universities to drive environmental sustainability should be to adopt human resource policies that reward, rather than penalise, academics who choose carbon friendly strategies, such as restricting their international travel or taking long and expensive ground-based journeys to international events.

Our framework has for the first time put together a range of organisational, educational, enabling, incentivising and persuasive strategies that places responsibility for making less polluting choices in the joint hands of event organisers and participants. We now intend to test this framework by asking event organisers to use it when organising events, and then collecting participant and organisation level data to determine how successful it is in driving down emissions. We would also like to invite other organisations to test the framework by implementing it and then collecting event emissions data for their own conferences, meetings and events.

Reducing the huge environmental cost of academic exchange is necessary for our public credibility. However, more importantly, we owe the greatest responsibility to our planet. Academics need to be part of the decarbonising solution, not part of the problem.