Sustainability

As an international consortium, we have a responsibility towards sustainability. Therefore, we engage ourselves to follow the recommendations regarding sustainability and climate compensation as compilated by Professor Alasdair Skelton, Co-Director of the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University.

Recommendations

The best form of climate compensation is to avoid greenhouse gas emissions in the first place. This can be done (for example) by replacing air travel with virtual meetings (often >90% emissions reduction), by replacing air travel with rail travel (often >80% emissions reduction) and by replacing multiple segment flights with direct flights (emissions reduction depends on the number and length of segments that are being replaced).

The online tool ecopassenger.org is recommended for comparing greenhouse gas emissions from air travel and rail travel in Europe. It is likely that the “climate factor” penalizes air travel unfairly as it focuses on greenhouse gases which do not stay long in the atmosphere and are therefore less likely to have a long term effect on the climate. This factor is therefore not recommended.

Regarding deciding to fly or not to fly, the following flow chart might be helpful:

If flying is the only option, climate compensation might be considered.

It is better to compensate in your own country or a country with a similar income status to your own. This usually costs a lot more, but negative issues related to climate equity are more likely to be avoided.

If you do choose to climate compensate by funding a project in a low income country, the World Wildlife Fund (http://wwf.org/) recommend choosing Gold Standard (https://www.goldstandard.org/) certified projects.

It is also important:

• to choose climate compensation projects which focus on carbon dioxide because other greenhouse gases do not stay long in the atmosphere.
• to be aware that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere which have been elevated by our actions will remain elevated for hundreds to tens of thousands of years.

For these reasons:

• projects which result in avoided emissions (e.g. replacement of fossil fuel burning with renewable energy) are better than projects which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (e.g. planting trees).
• projects which guarantee longevity (e.g. conversion of carbon dioxide to rock-forming minerals or permanent forestation of an area which is presently not forested), are better than short term (e.g. planting trees which might later be cut down and not necessarily replaced).