Bigfoot: On being a climate scientist that flies

My piece from the No Fly Climate Sci website

As a researcher examining the interface of climate change and livelihood transitions, reducing my carbon footprint is a professional and personal issue for me. I try to do so by walking to work, carpooling, recycling and eating less meat. However, these options are difficult to engage with when the systems and institutions in a country disincentivise them. For example, Indian cities are not particularly known for being walkable or having cycling tracks, making these options perilous (a few years ago, noted environmentalist, Sunita Narain was run over while cycling to work in Delhi).

Flying less is often put forth as a positive behavioural change with a large impact on individual emissions. I have consciously started flying less, either clubbing meetings to reduce multiple trips or taking the train if that is an option. However, again, being a researcher based in the global South, there are some challenges that are seldom recognised in narratives around ‘climate researchers must walk the talk’. First, with distances as large as they are in India, train rides can last well over 12-15 hours (and up to 24-36 hours if you are traversing the country). Taking such options might often mean travelling over the weekend, eating into time one reserves for family or self-care. Second, important conferences in my field are often held in America or Europe (e.g., the Adaptation Futures 2016 was in Rotterdam, the Cities and Climate Change Conference 2018 is in Edmonton). Getting to these and showcasing one’s work is usually only possible by flying, often at a large financial and physical cost.

An argument I hear often is to not attend these conferences at all, thus eliminating the need to travel completely. Often, such suggestions come well-established researchers, with strong networks and an extensive body of work. To young researchers in my team, many of whom will use conferences to travel abroad for the first time in their life, the pros of presenting their ideas to an international audience, getting feedback on their work, and experiencing a different culture, outweighs concerns of carbon emissions. This is why, while I applaud my European colleagues who choose to take the train instead of flying from say the Netherlands to Sweden or France to the UK, I am unable to provide similar stories of restraint.

I continue to make small amends – offsetting some of the miles, using social media and livestreaming to learn of new advances in my field, and sharing with my team, opportunities to present closer to home. And though I try to fly less, as a researcher based out of South Asia and presenting on international platforms, I find it hard to do.

Postscript

In March this year, I was scheduled to travel to the IPCC Cities Conference in Edmonton. It would be the farthermost I’d have travelled, from my current base in Myanmar, with a large carbon footprint and great financial cost. It was an important conference in my field, would provide a great networking opportunity, and my panel on urban adaptation case studies across Asia, Africa and Latin America had been accepted and fully funded! In the end, I never got my Canadian visa on time and ended up presenting remotely. The thought of speaking through a computer to an audience far away wasn’t particularly exciting. But it worked! I pre-recorded the presentation to avoid hiccups and the panel managed audience questions brilliantly. Yes, I missed meeting colleagues and researchers in person, but Twitter helped update me on key presentations. As a first timer, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy remote-presenting can be and have since then taught classes remotely, slowly chipping away at my Bigfoot!

Further reading on flying less

• Would you attend a conference by robot?
• Academia and low flying
• And though I should have started with this, why is flying bad anyway?