Reducing aviation emissions in the tertiary education and research sector: international education

Reducing aviation emissions in the tertiary education and research sector: International Education
Aviation emissions in international education, with Ailsa Lamont

For the fourth instalment of our Reducing Aviation Emissions blog series, we have an informative blog by Ailsa Lamont, Co-Founder of the International Education Sustainability Group (IESG). Ailsa was a senior leader in Australian universities before switching focus to help the higher education sector act on climate. She has trained with Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader and served as a NAFSA Senior Fellow for Sustainability. She is a recipient of the 2023 IEAA Excellence Award for Distinguished Contribution to International Education.

Read on to discover how our institutions can reduce their aviation emissions related to international education, without compromising on global reach and impact.

Clearing the haze: Aviation emissions in international education
When climate scientists talk about CO2e filling the atmosphere, it gets hazy very quickly. It’s hard to visualise the intangible. In 2014, for example, aviation emissions associated with international student travel were between 14.01 and 38.54 megatons of CO2e. Professor Robin Shields puts these figures into perspective in his must-read paper from the Journal of Cleaner Production (2019). In megatons, the lower estimate was equivalent to the annual emissions of Latvia (13.94) or Jamaica (15.47). The higher end? That was comparable to the national emissions of Croatia (30.42) or Tunisia (39.72). These comparisons were based on 2014 data. Ten years later in 2024 the number of globally mobile students has more than doubled.

The good news? It’s not all bad. Shields notes that although they are substantial, emissions per student are decreasing thanks to regionalisation and a growing share of students studying closer to home. But providers aren’t so great at keeping track of (or being accountable for) their carbon footprint. Although many report on staff air miles, emissions generated by international students on the move have typically been seen as outside their responsibility.

But so long as students and staff need to travel, international education is part of the problem, even while simultaneously being vitally important to universities’ financial health and, at its best, a real force for good. International study can transform students’ lives, broaden their perspectives and develop exactly the kind of problem-solving skills the world needs to tackle the climate emergency.

The challenge for international education
The internal challenge for institutions is how to marry their climate ambitions with maintaining a strong international program. International teams can find themselves caught in the horns of this dilemma, without clear guidance around what practical steps to take. This was a key driver for developing the Climate Action Barometer (CAB) - the only climate benchmark designed specifically for the field of international education.

The CAB exists to help participating institutions make better decisions around climate action, to learn from and share examples of great practice with others in the benchmark group, and to demonstrate how a commitment to climate action can be translated into action, over time.

It also contains the ClimateEye instrument that calculates and compares the emissions associated with travel for international staff and student mobility.

It is not a ranking; results are anonymised and each institution sees only how it compares to others.

As Jo Byng, the Director of International Strategy, Mobility and Operations at Western Sydney University, currently ranked #1 for sustainability in the Times Higher Education Impact Ranking, put it: ‘Taking part in the Climate Action Barometer helped us gain meaningful insights and identified areas for improvement without any concerns about public disclosure.’

The Climate Action Barometer (CAB)
The Climate Action Barometer (CAB) survey tool tracks and compares climate action policies, practices and emissions across the core functions of international education: staff travel to support internationalisation, and student mobility from students crossing international borders for degree study, exchange or short-term programs, or for transnational education (‘TNE’). An example of this might be a student from China travelling to Malaysia to study at the campus of a Scottish university. It also encompasses core supporting activities around international strategy, staff and student engagement and sectoral collaboration.

Measurement is, however, just the beginning. CAB participants also receive a tailored set of recommendations and join the CAB Good Practice Exchange (GPX). Here they learn from each other how to adopt more climate-friendly strategies.

Examples include:

• Working with the agent network to implement less carbon-intensive student recruitment models;
• Tracking the extent to which prospective international students factor in institutions’ sustainability credentials to their choice of where to study;
• Adopting in-country staffing strategies that reduce distance from market;
• Encouraging and promoting student participation in climate-themed study abroad programs;
• Improving and tracking climate literacy for international students and staff.

Lessons from the Australasian pilot – a wake up call
In late 2023, we completed our pilot study with a pioneering Founders Group of nine Australian and New Zealand institutions.[1] We found great examples of practice but overall, the pilot showed clearly that there is more work to be done.

See the other entries in this blog series:

• Reducing aviation emissions in the tertiary education & research sector briefing paper. Compiled by Lara Fahey and Matthew Woodthorpe at EAUC Scotland, this paper sets out the aviation decarbonisation challenge, current best practice, and present and future solutions to meet this part of the net zero challenge.

• Early Career Researchers. Written by Dr Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, this opinion piece is a personal reflection on the need to fly as an early career researcher (ECR), responding to the often quoted "need" for ECRs to fly to succeed in their academic career.

• Final Call. Written by Dr Shona Russell, this is a personal reflection on the need to fly for academic conferences, whilst juggling caring responsibilities, via the medium of a poem.

• Oxford’s Flight Levy. Written by Joanne Murraybrown, this technical piece details the process behind how the University of Oxford implemented their flight levy – redistributing an internal charge from those that fly to the Oxford Sustainability Fund.