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

The overwhelming majority of conferences are not environmentally sustainable and lack clear green strategies or climate policies (8, 25, 26) . Only 6% (15/270) of conferences we examined offered some form of sustainability initiative incorporated into their organization ( Figure 1 , Table 9 ). A total of ~859,114 attendees of these conferences collectively generated ~2 million tons of CO2 in the form of air travel and other activities to attend these meetings (8) . Climate change has already shown devastating consequences; extreme weather events resulting in loss of life and billions of dollars in financial costs for a single nation; the spread of viral and bacterial disease; rising sea levels; increased food insecurity; and slowing of scientific progress among many others and these are only early impacts (27, 28) . According to the 2019 UN climate report, CO2 emissions must drastically decrease within a decade in order to slow down the global temperature rise and irreversible climate catastrophe (29, 30) . This means that time is against us and small changes in work organization and lifestyle will not be sufficient any more. There are over 8.4 million full-time equivalent researchers in the world as of 2015, representing a growth of over 20% since 2007 (31, 32, 154) . Clearly, researchers can contribute to these goals by reducing their travel related CO2 emissions. (34) . Comparable to global annual per capita CO2 emissions in many countries, Figure S3 .