Evaluating features of scientific conferences: A call for improvements

Sarvenaz Sarabipour; Benjamin Schwessinger; Fiona N. Mumoki; Aneth D. Mwakilili; Aziz Khan; Humberto J. Debat; Pablo J. Sáez; Samantha Seah; Tomislav Mestrovic

Participation in the 270 national and international conferences held during 2018-2020 that we examined in this work, released over 1.5 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere (Table S8 ) (8) . Only 5% of the global population enjoy the privilege of flying annually and most academics are in that demographic. A number of scholars routinely fly over 100,000 miles every year (138) . Academic air travel makes up almost half of total university emissions (117,123). Air travel by an academic in the UK who on average attends only one international conference or meeting per year by plane, will produce COâ‚‚ emissions footprint of about five tons. This is over ten times as much as the average UK person's carbon footprint from leisure flights, and nearly 20% more than the average UK citizen's total annual carbon footprint from travel and home energy combined (139) . There are other damaging aspects of conferences which include plastic badges, bottles and other promotional items (Box 1). Reducing air travel to national and international conferences and organizing virtual conferences will have a dramatic impact on the environment. For example, a recent experience with multi-site conferencing showed reductions of 50%-70% in travel-related greenhouse gas emissions compared to the singlesite alternatives despite the increased numbers of participants (60, 140) . Low-cost or free nearly carbon neutral conference models ( Figure 5 ) and online poster presentation practices will greatly reduce scientific conference air travel footprint (70, 71, 141, 142) .