June 2022
The academic system plays a crucially positive role in the current climate crisis in the fields of education, research, communication with the public, and the provision of scientific advice to policy-making bodies. To provide a more complete picture of its impacts, the ALLEA federation recently published a document that explores the negative aspects of the operation of academic institutions.
The study was initiated by Die Junge Akademie, whose mission is to support interdisciplinary and society-wide dialogue between young academics. (Die Junge Akademie operates primarily in German-speaking countries, but since its establishment in 2000, it has inspired the foundation of various young academies all around the world. Unfortunately, the academic environment in Czechia, in which hierarchy is based to a substantial degree on seniority, lacks any such complementary institution.) The work on the report was coordinated by ALLEA (All European Academies), an umbrella organization for more than fifty European academies and learned societies, including the Learned Society of the Czech Republic and the Czech Academy of Sciences. The working group of fifteen members included two Czech scientists - myself and Antonín Fejfar. The report was published under the title of Towards Climate Sustainability of the Academic System in Europe and beyond and presented at the ALLEA general assembly in Brussels in mid-May. Coincidentally, the other main topic discussed at the general assembly was the trustworthiness of science in the eyes of today's society. As some of the keynote speakers pointed out - the two topics are interconnected, i.e. the scientific community's calls for immediate action to stave off a climate disaster will sound hypocritical unless scientific institutions themselves strive to operate sustainably.
For readers with a keen interest in the topic, the one-hundred-page-long report contains a summary of existing studies on greenhouse-gas emissions produced by individual types of academic institutions as well as by specific academic institutions, information on existing mitigation strategies, and proposed further measures. For readers with a less keen interest, the report also has a three-page executive summary. Below, I offer a few observations and opinions that I formed while preparing the report and talking to the other representatives of (mainly European) academic institutions. These are my personal views, some of which do not correspond with those presented in the report.
My first observation concerns the degree, to which individual academic institutions are committed to implementing measures aimed at increasing the climate sustainability of their operation. Despite there being substantial differences between individual academic institutions, there are certain statistical patterns related to geographic locations (with a significant observable difference between Western and Scandinavian countries and countries of the former Eastern Bloc) and types of institutions. The institutions that are the most open to changes in their operation are universities. This is probably in part due to the pressure exerted by students and in part because they understand their role in society more broadly. By contrast, grant agencies and specialized scientific societies often adopt only a narrow role in supporting research.
My second observation concerns the various types of necessary transformation measures and the associated barriers to their implementation. The most accessible transformation measures are purely technical changes. These are usually also cost-efficient (thermal insulation of buildings), and even in cases when they are not cost-efficient (green energy), their implementation is usually quick and simple (but not without reserving the necessary capacity and making a concentrated effort) and their implementation is widely supported. On the other end of the spectrum, we would find measures that require changes to the academic culture. One important example is various proxy parameters used for measuring academic success. For individuals, one such important proxy parameter is short-term foreign mobility, which in some cases results in nothing more than a line in a résumé and hundreds of litres of burnt aviation fuel. An open discussion about these proxy parameters could lead not only towards more environmentally sustainable behaviour but also to redefining our academic values and culture to the better in the narrow scholarly sense. Mobility, which is to a great degree specific to the academic environment, is discussed in the report in much detail. Moving from individuals to academic institutions, some of the most complicated necessary transformations that we find on this level are those that are in opposition to the idea that we need to permanently pursue as much growth as possible. A good example is the construction of new buildings for academic institutions that are being proudly designed and planned even in cases when it would suffice to carefully renovate existing buildings or when there is no need for a new building at all. Each such building requires thousands of tons of cement, which means thousands of tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. This tendency to build is further stimulated by subsidy programmes that are designed for this specific purpose and without taking into consideration the related climate impacts. It would not be hard to find many more examples of institutionalized mechanisms that encourage wasteful behaviour in the academic environment, and it is high time we started talking about them.
My third observation concerns the most common arguments against climate-beneficial transformation within the academic system, especially when it comes to polarising topics, such as business trips and flying. One such argument claims that from a global perspective, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by academic institutions is small. However, small and negligible are two different things, and the challenge of averting the current climate crisis that our society faces is so overwhelmingly difficult because it requires specific changes in many relatively small systems. Another frequently used argument talks about the defence of academic freedoms. Academic freedoms consist in the right to view critically deep-rooted dogmas as well as contemporary scientific knowledge and the right to openly inform the scientific community and the public of one’s findings. Academic freedoms do not consist and have never consisted in the right to unlimited resources or in the right to perform research in a completely unregulated way. On the contrary, the scientific community takes special care to harmonise high-quality research with universal well-being. This attitude is best reflected in the strict regulations and ethical standards in medical sciences, which were introduced in reaction to the pseudoscientific experiments of Josef Mengele. However, the academic system should be capable of regulation even in matters, in which the consequences of operation are not as striking. It is not just about taking measures to address the climate change and other environmental issues, such as ocean pollution, soil degradation, and loss of biodiversity (which are not the focus of the ALLEA report), but about seeking to be a responsible part of society in general.
The academic community is unique in the great degree of autonomy it enjoys. The report Towards Climate Sustainability of the Academic System in Europe and beyond gives examples of academic institutions that have used this privilege to make their operation more climatically sustainable and presents possible ways for individuals and institutions to start implementing transformation measures.
I would like to thank Antonín Fejfar for his comments.