Can Covid-19 force sustainability researchers to rethink their travel habits?

Kieran Campbell Johnston and Niko Wojtynia, both PhD researchers from the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, explain why they think the COVID-19 pandemic can provide the context to transform the way the sustainability research community interacts with travel.

Travel is often assumed to be an essential part of academia, from coordinating with international teams and attending conferences to lecturing and conducting fieldwork. Indeed, chairing sessions at international conferences is highly recommended as an activity to assist career progression.

With heavy carbon impacts from transport, and flying in particular, accusations of hypocrisy can be hard for sustainability researchers to digest. Despite some evidence of academic air travel having a limited impact on professional success, changing personal and institutional habits is hard.

Many of our peers and colleagues relish the opportunity to travel to conferences, often combining work trips with holidays, and openly state a preference for international and even intercontinental trips over more local opportunities to engage with the academic community.

This may not be unique to sustainability researchers, but rather reflects the cognitive dissonance of our generation: we espouse lofty ideals for ethical and sustainable lifestyles, yet are also highly socially and culturally globalized and thus make heavy use of cheap international air travel. ‘Millennials’' social media feeds are as full of conspicuously virtuous behaviour (recycled tote bags and vegan brunch) as they are of flying around the globe for leisure.

These disruptions show just how forced adjustments can alter our travel and communication patterns

Does the severe disruption caused by Covid-19 provide an opportunity to radically transform and reinvent the norms of academic communication and travel? In the last month, in line with recommendations from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM), our own Utrecht University has suspended classroom activities, initiated work-from-home for faculty and, as of March 19 has closed most buildings. Such activities are comparable to other European countries and universities, who now have to adjust, with many suspending conferences and summer schools.  

Yet, these disruptions show just how forced adjustments can alter our travel and communication patterns, from attending meetings online to providing a push to make virtual conference participation more normal.

The recent Pathways to Sustainability conference in Utrecht for example livestreamed the entire event, including a remote keynote on climate tipping points from Professor Tim Lenton, who presented from his home institution in Exeter (UK). While this wasn’t in response to Covid-19, it illustrates that the infrastructure already exists, we just have to use it. 

Can virtual meetings ever replace networking and meeting colleagues internationally? Perhaps not yet, but the current public health crisis gives us a unique opportunity to adjust the way we interact with other researchers and work together remotely. Co-writing papers from different locations is of course not new, but as quarantines and social distancing continue over the coming weeks and months we are bound to also make virtual the many informal and serendipitous interactions that lead to new ideas.

Organizations are already setting up virtual “coffee corners” to facilitate this and using office chat rooms to ask a quick question about Excel formulas or finding a certain database can be surprisingly effective. Making these encounters possible in the sphere of inter-organizational interaction, as traditionally provided by conferences or symposia, is the next step.

It is imperative that we change our travel habits. Whilst some researchers are leading the way, perhaps the challenge brought by Covid-19 can help cement and adjust those travel practises that we know we should change, but haven’t yet. Let’s stop flying and start making virtual participation the norm. Can we, the sustainability research community, make this happen?