Responsible travel at ICTA-UAB

Research activities generate considerable carbon emissions, notably due to air travel. Some researchers have started to advocate for a serious reduction of academia’s carbon footprint, and several universities have started to implement institutional measures to reduce research related carbon emissions (e.g., allowing compensation of carbon emissions associated with flights, incentivizing train travel, avoidance of layovers, limiting reimbursement of short-distance flights, reducing conference attendance, or allocating individual carbon budgets).

Following this trend, since September 2020, ICTA-UAB has established a new “Responsible travel” group in charge to elaborate a set of guidelines to help membres of the ICTA-UAB community to reduce the contribution of their research-related travel to global greenhouse gas emissions.

The group has defined the three following objectives for the 2020-2021 academic year:

• To sensitize the ICTA-UAB community about the need to reduce the carbon footprint of professional travel.
• To design tools that would allow us to measure and monitor travel related carbon footprint at ICTA-UAB.
• To elaborate guidelines to help members of the ICTA-UAB community to reduce the contribution of their research-related travel to global greenhouse gas emissions.

The group is action-oriented and functions in a decentralized way, with all the members proposing and taking the lead in specific actions, according to their preferences and time availability. Members of the group meet once a month (1 h) to coordinate next steps and actions.

If you are interested in contributing to any of the goals above, please send an email to victoria.reyes@uab.cat