Ten Simple Rules to Run a Research Group Sustainably
By Tobias Plieninger, Nora Fagerholm & Claudia Bieling
Over the past 20 years, sustainabiliy science has developed into a powerful research field, now being at the center of research institutes, funding programmes, and scientific journals. However, the key idea of this field — to provide scientific contributions to sustainability — often conflicts with university structures and established academic work practices.
For example, flying to international conferences across the world remains a widespread practice in academia. Such knowledge-action gap can inhibit impactful sustainability science in multiple ways. In particular, researchers can be affected by psychological stress, comprising negative mental and emotional consequences.
In this perspective, we argue that research groups are key drivers for shaping and implementing more reflective and more sustainable behaviors and by that for resolving the widespread knowledge-action gap in sustainability science. We here suggest ten simple rules to foster the environmental sustainability of research groups, based on our personal experiences and experiments as research group leaders at European universities.
1. Monitor your environmental footprint
To run a research group in a sustainable manner starts by creating an understanding of the social-ecological impacts of different types of group activities. Build a knowledge basis to understand where the group currently stands, define common sustainability targets, and monitor impacts regularly.
Typically, the largest share of researchers’ environmental footprint is caused by professional travel, in particular when carried out by airplane and car. Hence, the first step is to calculate the carbon footprint of the group’s travel activities. Several tools exist to perform this, for instance the Travel Carbon Footprint Calculator. A second step is to pay attention to energy and resource consumption, for example in relation to the use of internet, technical equipment, physical printing, and food catering.
Although exact monitoring of energy and resource use may be impossible, current practices can be listed: What are the internet habits of the group, what cloud services are used, and where is big data analysis done? How energy-efficient are equipment, instruments, and processes being used? What activities produce the bulk of lab waste? To what degree are they being shared?
2. Foster learning and innovation
The relation between innovation and sustainability has many facets. On the one hand, it is clear that we need to adopt new practices to become more sustainable and that technologies can greatly support us in this. On the other hand, particularly technological innovation can be even detrimental to sustainability when it leads to rebound effects. Therefore, it is indispensable to critically assess available options (office infrastructure, networking procedures, etc.) with regard to their actual sustainability impacts and clearly figure out what kind of innovation and learning is needed to become more sustainable.
Using approaches such as social innovation or design thinking may offer opportunities to use the knowledge and skills of the research group members as catalysts to co-design innovative sustainability solutions.
Motivation towards sustainability also comes from following how colleagues perform in this task and from mutual learning. Learning can be fostered by actively exchanging thoughts with colleagues at other institutions or by following arenas promoting discussion, such as blogs (e.g., Academic Flying) or podcasts (e.g., Finding Sustainability).
3. Reduce your environmental footprint
Although frequent air travel is not a precondition for success in academia, long-distance travel to conferences, workshops, seminars, and field sites is common in sustainability science. Several steps can be taken to reduce this footprint. At least in Europe, prioritizing railway for mid-range academic travel is feasible. For example, thousands of academics in Germany have pledged not to use airplanes for trips of less than 1000 km distance.
Innovative conference styles have potential for substantially lowering the environmental footprint of a conference while keeping the character of a live meeting and lowering barriers to inclusiveness. Templates are offered by the ‘Nearly Carbon-Neutral’ (NCN) conference or the ‘All continents, Balanced gender, low Carbon transport, Diverse backgrounds’ (ABCD) conference that mixes live-streamed and pre-recorded talks with in-person ones. Department seminars and PhD defenses can also be moved into online formats, making them accessible to a much larger and wider audience. In selection processes, committees should remove the number of physical talks given at distant departments from their evaluation criteria. Rather, visibility and networks can also be developed through original use of social media, engagement in academic societies, or editorial tasks. Due to their generally higher environmental footprints, senior academics bear more responsibility to reduce their footprints than junior ones.
Reducing the environmental footprint of travel to field sites is more difficult: Does it make sense to ‘regionalize’ empirical sustainability research? To what degree can online surveys and remote sensing replace fieldwork on the ground? Can lesser and longer field campaigns replace more frequent and shorter travel to field sites? Can stronger reliance on local partners reduce travel?
4. Nurture campus sustainability
Universities are large institutions with high societal impact: They involve diverse actors with connections to numerous societal groups, constitute important economic players not only at local level, and provide key impulses through research and their ‘think tank’ character particularly in regard to economic and technological development. Moreover, they have a high reputation and serve as points of reference and orientation for the public and political decision-makers alike.
More and more universities around the globe are currently setting examples by withdrawing investments in fossil fuel-based companies and suspending research that is connected to these. But typically, university administrations will only get active for sustainability when they perceive pressure to do so. Often, a few key persons have been enough to kick off university actions for sustainability.
Universities can also nicely link research, teaching, and sustainability impact. For example, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna established its own carbon offsetting scheme with projects in several countries. Off-setting academic travel of employees, but also critically assessing the social and ecological complexities of such off-setting in research and teaching, is at the heart of this endeavor. Other important tasks for universities to advance sustainability are enhancing energy and water resource efficiency of university campuses, upscaling the generation and use of renewable energy, and climate- and biodiversity-proofing of university greenspace management.
5. Embrace sustainability in your private life
Many academics have fluidity in terms of separation of work and private lives and, although everybody has a right to a private life, a large discrepancy in sustainability goals and actions at work compared to those taken in one’s private life can jeopardize credibility.
Being a sustainability scholar means we can spread the message not only at work but we also personally contribute to important social tipping points that may trigger the spreading of new social norms and individual behaviors. One everyday example is active transportation to work by feet or bicycle with substantial improvements to both personal health and climate indicators. The environmental stewardship literature offers rich examples of the linkages between consciousness, individual and collective environmental action, and personal well-being.
6. Constructively deal with environmental anxiety
There are multiple ways of reacting to the current sustainability challenges. Given the existential and complex character of the issue, particularly young people struggle with feeling overwhelmed and intimidated. This may set free energy for taking action, but for many, at least at times, causes rather the contrary: they fall into despair, feel depressed, or adopt a fatalistic or cynical attitude.
It is therefore an important part of a research group’s sustainability agenda to create an atmosphere and space in which people can openly exchange on their mental reactions to the current ecological and social crises. It may be helpful to focus on developing positive visions of our future and pathways towards them, acting as shared counter-narratives to images of inescapable destruction and despair that are dominating in the current debate.
Examples such as thousands of landscape-level sustainability initiatives or ‘seeds of good anthropocenes’ help us to develop hope and imagine positive futures of a sustainable and good life as something that is achievable.
7. Design your research projects for sustainability impact
While striving to minimize negative environmental impacts, we want to maximize the positive sustainability impact of our research. There are many directions for achieving impact, whether instrumental (triggering changes in practice and policy), conceptual (fostering new understanding), capacity building (training relevant actors), attitudinal/cultural (influencing societal values), or enduring connectivity (fostering follow-on interactions) impacts.
Societal impact can unfold at many spatial scales, from local to global ones, and can often be achieved by very simple means. One example are the self-made ‘innovation leaflets‘ produced in the AGFORWARD project that proved very influential in upscaling novel agroforestry systems across Europe. Another possibility is to build impact activities into our formal research plans. For example, PhD researchers could be expected to develop at least one impact activity besides the typically three scholarly papers that comprise a dissertation. In such contexts, multiple synergies between academic and real-world impact can be created, for example when policy papers are published in scientific journals.
Beyond that, we consider it important to make striving for real-world impact an everyday practice. Potential opportunities include, among others, engaging local media when carrying out fieldwork; releasing targeted plain-language summaries for any research paper published; and creating and disseminating short video documentaries (see e.g. UTU Tanzania Team).
Helpful resources on how to achieve short- and long-term sustainability impacts are The Research Impact Handbook and The Global Guide to Research Impact.
8. Engage with stakeholders
Sustainability science has potential to spread the word to diverse groups of stakeholders at the science-society and the science-policy interfaces. The most straightforward way to engage with stakeholders is integrating them as partners into research projects.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) developed a format for stakeholder participation that can be adapted to multiple domains and levels of governance. Similarly, the BiodivERsA platform offers detailed resources for informing and engaging with stakeholders. At best, stakeholder engagement leads to knowledge co-creation supporting transformative changes to sustainability.
9. Capitalize on sustainability teaching
While many researchers aim for creating leverage for sustainability through research projects and publications, teaching is also a key arena and tool to achieve sustainability. After finishing their study programs, generations of students pursue careers in relevant natural resource management agencies, NGOs, or companies at various levels and in diverse fields, thus becoming decision-makers in all societal spheres.
Spreading the idea of sustainability and making it part of the worldview and commitment of students — not only in sustainability teaching, but in all kinds of classes — is therefore a very powerful, yet relatively easy to accomplish task for researchers. Innovative teaching formats for sustainable development, for instance by using living labs to engage students with applied sustainability challenges, allow for handing over responsibility to students, creating life-changing experiences to them and promoting long-lasting impacts.
10. Recognize your biases and limits
Although the potential for promoting sustainability in a research group is vast, there are limitations. In practical terms, any research activity comes with social-ecological trade-offs, ambiguities, and compromises, so that we have to accept that we cannot act 100% perfect in our lives and will have to deal with ambiguities and compromises. For some eminent workshops, conferences, or stakeholder contacts, long-distance air travel may simply be irreplaceable (and useful). While it may be rewarding to strengthen research activities close to campus, the Global South is known to be particularly rich in sustainability challenges and lessons, and North-South exchange is a fundamental pillar of sustainability science.
In more fundamental terms, navigating normativity in sustainability science may pose challenges. Sustainability science is a value-laden discipline and — in the interest of promoting sustainability — to some degree departs from ‘objective’ science in that it comprises a facts-based and a normative dimension. Most sustainability scientists embrace science-based advocacy for sustainable development. However, how to (and how not to) advocate for sustainability in policy and practice is more contested.
For getting the facts straight, it is indispensable to strictly consider good scientific practice codes and use rigorous peer-review processes. We can avoid misusing the scientific process also by grounding policy and practice recommendations firmly in our own scientific expertise. For the normative dimension, we need to make our background and claims explicit. In very practical terms, building up a research group that comprises students and scientists of diverse backgrounds and values may be the best premise for delivering good sustainability science to society.
Outlook
In this perspective, we provide ten simple rules for reducing the negative and increasing the positive impacts of a research group. The solutions that individual research groups and their leaders can contribute may appear small given the magnitude of current sustainability challenges that our societies are facing. Many relevant decisions may not lie in the hands of a research group. Also, there is a debate on the effectiveness of individual action for sustainability.
However, we argue that reducing a sustainability scientist’s environmental footprint is setting an important example, with high potential for multiplication and scaling. Addressing sustainability issues that researchers can influence through their own activities at the level of research groups can be particularly powerful by mediating between individual and — undoubtedly indispensable — collective and institution-level action for sustainability.
Thus, applying sustainability principles in everyday research practices can provide important social tipping points that may trigger the spreading of new social norms and behaviors, but also policies and economic processes.
Full paper: Plieninger, T., Fagerholm, N. & Bieling, C. (2020): How to run a sustainability science research group sustainably? Sustainability Science, doi: 10.1007/s11625–020–00857-z .
