Academic travelling in times of climate crisis and increasing social inequity

“[I]n a world that appears to be waking up – finally – to the inequities that attach to global warming, how do airborne academics justify the fact that they belong to hypermobile ‘kinetic elites’ (Sheller, 2018) – a class, in short, whose globetrotting rests on the involuntary sacrifices of less privileged groups?” (Bjørkdahl & Franco Duharte, 2022: 2). 

The climate crisis and resulting social inequities are at the heart of the COJUST project. We want to find out how climate policies in Norway impact low-income groups. Based on these findings we seek to co-produce alternative climate policies together with low-income groups that enable their participation in sustainability transition processes.  

COJUSTs no-flying policy 

The COJUST project has adopted a no-flying policy. When going on fieldwork or presenting on conferences we travel by train, bus, or electric cars. Why did we decide that? On the one hand, this has to do with our relation to the groups we study and collaborate with – low-income groups – and the importance of credibility, respect, and trust. How can we meet people from marginalized low-income groups in vulnerable situations and ask them to tell their stories about mobility and everyday life right after having arrived from the airport? On the other hand – on a more general level – as scientists working on sustainability transitions, we feel that it has become increasingly difficult to justify travel modes with high CO2 emissions. Through normalizing alternative modes of travel, we hope to contribute to institutional change and make it easier for others to choose not to fly.  

However, academic life is deeply entwined with travelling, and in particular flying, and it is therefore not easy to change flying practices. In a recently published book on Academic Flying and the Means of Communication the editors Bjørkdahl and Franco Duharte describe how flying is considered an important and integrated part of academic practice and identity.  

“Academics have worked aeromobility into the ethos of science, in what might appear like a peculiar mix of necessity and romance: Globetrotting is part of the allure of being an academic, but at the same time, academics must fly if they are to ‘stay in the game’ – or so the story goes” (Bjørkhaug & Franco Duharte 2022: 2).  

So, academics fly because institutional incentives in academia push them to do it. This can be calls for internalization and presence at international conferences which are considered important to “stay in the game”. But Bjørkhaug and Franco Duharte also mention that academic flying is about status. Flying is connected to prestige, success, and some kind of “elite status”. In addition, it is linked to higher salary: “The more you fly, the more important you are” (Bjørkhaug & Franco Duharte 2022: 5), and the more money you make. Another aspect is that many academics work a lot of unpaid overtime. Travelling to conferences and maybe combining it with a long weekend is one of the “treats” of academic life, something we feel we “deserve” since we work so hard, and salaries are comparably low.  

Thus, academic flying practices are deeply embedded in academic culture, identity, values, infrastructure, and institutions, and therefore hard to change.  

An “office with a view”, dull food and weak Wi-Fi 

What happened when the COJUST team tried to “battle the beast” of academic flying and travelled by other means? In November last year, we travelled from Trondheim to Stavanger to conduct storytelling workshops with low-income groups. A direct flight would take 1 hour and 15 minutes, the entire trip from door to door maybe four hours. The train ride, however, took 16 hours one way.  

The first part of the trip was the afternoon train from Trondheim to Oslo, which took a bit more than 6,5 hours. From an idealistic and “romantic” point of view, there are many advantages with slow travelling. A day on a train can be a very nice working day. Disconnected from the internet (although this sometimes was involuntarily) and not disturbed by any meeting, we were provided with much needed time for reading and writing. On train rides through Norway, you pass through beautiful nature and some of us really enjoyed the feeling of freedom and calmness when slowly moving with the train and resting our eyes on the landscape.  

Figure 1: An office with a view

From a more practical point of view, a good Wi-Fi connection would be great if the vision of the “office with a view” should become reality for more of us. On our trip we experienced long hours without any connection. Also, the food on the trains left a lot to be desired, the only eatable vegetarian option was a cheese roll. Therefore, it was good to have some time in Oslo to buy food and drinks before boarding the bus to Kongsberg (“buss for train” due to construction work), where we – again after an hour of waiting in an uncomfortable small waiting hall – were able to get on the night train to Stavanger. Comfortably in our own small sleeping compartments, we were able to get a good night’s sleep before reaching Stavanger the next morning. There, the train company had a deal with a centrally located hotel so that we could get a shower and a very nice breakfast before starting our project work with the storytelling workshops.   

Figure 2: The COJUST team in the train to Oslo

All in all, the multi-doubled time use is the main issue that makes train travels less attractive than flying for many. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to be away from home for the time required to travel by train, for example due to caring duties. This becomes an even bigger issue when travelling beyond the Nordics and Northern Europe. Apart from that – and small issues such as Wi-Fi connection and quality of food – the no-flying policy was not difficult to implement for the COJUST project. We claim that one of the reasons for that is that we decided this as a group, not as individuals.  

An institutional responsibility 

Our university has climate goals and aims to reduce emissions related to travel activities of the employees. At the same time, the university emphasizes internationalization, leaving it to the individual employee to navigate this discrepancy. The individual academic is put in a difficult squeeze between climate consciousness and ambitions to reduce emissions on the one hand, and calls for internationalization and expectations from colleagues, employers, and funders to travel to conferences worldwide on the other hand (Henriksen 2020).  

We argue that this should not be the responsibility of the individual researcher. Although we do not support strict travel prohibition, institutional guidelines for travelling should be in place either on university, faculty of department level. Good examples are the conscious-travel flowchart of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research or the environmental strategy of FME Include. Both guidelines suggest as a first step to evaluate whether travel is necessary at all or whether other ways of communication, such as digital meetings, are equally appropriate. As Bjørkhaug and Franco Duharte (2022: 2) put it: “Flying in only one means of academic communication among many, and […] the state of the planet now obliges us to shift to other means”.  

-------- 

We have also transferred these travel practices to the CliCNord research project which focuses on climate change adaptation in remote communities in the Nordics. We have taken trains between Norway, Sweden and Denmark and seen that an alternative way of organizing our work travel is possible. Thus, we are crossing borders both geographically and in terms of practice.  

On the train between Oslo and Bergen, it is now possible to book your own train compartment for up to six people so that you can travel with colleagues and have meetings or writing workshops while travelling. Organizing work life and travel in alternative ways is crucial for a good work environment and represents a creative though binding approach to the transition project. Time – tranquility – unity – accountability – while you are on the train with good colleagues can be interpreted as a critique of the over-competitive university.  

References 

Bjørkdahl, K. & Franco Duharte, AS (2022): Introduction: Ending the Romance of Academic Flying. In: K. Bjørkdahl & AS Franco Duharte (eds.): Academic Flying and the Means of Communication. Singapre: Palgrave Macmillan. P. 1-18.  

Henriksen, H.M. (2020): En endring i luften - mot en mer bærekraftig jobbreisekultur blant vitenskapelige ansatte: En kvalitativ studie av vitenskapelige ansattes bruk av fly på jobbreiser. Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology.   

Sheller, M. (2018). Mobility justice: The politics of movement in an age of extremes. London: Verso.