Profs Who Fly

What does offsetting entail?

Do you want to help repair the damage you cause through your traveling to conferences and in the course of your research?

Calculating the emissions that result from your travel (air):

a. Keep track your flights (distance and type of plane (if possible))

b. Calculate their air miles and resulting greenhouse gas emissions (using online calculator or spreadsheet)

Make periodic payments based on travel emissions based on:

a. Assigning costs through work/project accounts – this will need a departmental process to be established, or;

b. Making personal / individual payments e.g. for family travel

c. Deciding the frequency of payments – we would suggest 6 monthly or annual (in arrears) Payments will be made to ‘Profs Who Fly’ account of Themba Trust Themba will then reconcile payments (to NMT/HIMACUL) with certificate issuance and retirement to ensure transparency and equity.

We would like to acknowledge the work of Nicole Kalas in helping establish the underpinning research and development efforts needed to get this activity to fly. Whilst many others have been involved and are worthy of mention, without Nicole's thoughtful and intelligent support none of this would have been possible. Thanks are also due Will Brandreth (Environmental Technology MSc Alumni (2015), Imperial College London), Alan Goron (Sustainable Energy Futures MSc (2016), Imperial College London), Andrew Emmott (Chair, Neno Macadamia Trust) and Ken Mkengala (HIMACUL, Malawi)

Why?

Academics are relatively wealthy and knowledgeable individuals who:

Value the direct sharing /exchange of knowledge and ideas and will travel to do so

The impacts of their travel cause damage to others

That the damage disproportionately afflicts the world’s poor and vulnerable

Cause and effect is mediated through impacts on ‘common pool’ / ‘global commons’ resources and so appears diffuse and disconnected from our individual choices

Reallocate resources to maximise comparative benefit

Break cycles of poverty and or degradative environmental cycles of activity

Encourage productive outcomes and engender (additional) livelihood benefits

Exploit emerging informatics and novel analytics and data presentation systems (IT interfaces) to enable:

Measurement, monitoring and verification (MMV) at high spatial and temporal resolutions

Purchasing travel emissions offsets through Profs Who Fly, directly connects you, the purchaser, with the seller, the poor small holder agroforestry farmers in developing countries, for near real-time MMV (measurement, monitoring and valuation).

We are working with The Neno Macadamia Trust and The (Malawi) Highland Macadamia Cooperative Union Ltd. (HIMACUL) to provide emissions offsets and support sustainable development agroforestry systems in Malawi.