With this petition, we urge the organizers of large international plant biology congresses to operate a rapid transition towards more sustainable configurations for the exchange of scientific knowledge in meetings. This initiative is motivated by the necessity to strongly reduce the impact of research activity on the environment and the need to show the way forward.

Keeping earth under +1.5°C, a target that climate scientists urge us to respect, requires that we drastically reduce human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, therefore, the consumption of fossil fuels. With this target, we are “allowed” to release in the atmosphere no more than 500 Gigatons of CO2 as we already released about 2,400 Gt in the last two centuries (IPCC, 2021). Along a theoretical exponential curve fitting that model, our CO2 emission must decay by 7% every year. In other words, more than half of the reduction efforts must be completed within a decade to preserve a planet livable for humans. As plant scientists, we understand the consequence of climate change on food security. This is probably one of the main motivations for young researchers to embrace plant sciences. We implicitly acknowledge the alerting message of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that emission must be drastically and immediately reduced. So, why not seriously consider it, as a community?

On the one hand, many scientists think that solutions come from research and innovation. And often, without acknowledging it, we feel that our important work should not be subjected to any restrictive constraints. On the other hand, a strong hurdle against the much desired societal shift toward sustainability is the lack of concrete examples where people seriously act to reduce GHG emission. Scientists are acutely aware of the problems we face and are (still) highly credible. So, we are uniquely positioned to initiate this move and we should engage our responsibility to do so. 

Many studies highlight that plane travels, in part to attend congresses, are one of the main sources of GHG emissions from scientists (Just in 2021, Getty, 2021; Passalacqua, 2021; Steckel, 2021; Thaller et al., 2021). Thus, to significantly lower our own emissions and to show the way to all, researchers must travel worldwide far less. While it is not possible to stop travelling altogether, we invite you to replace the classical "only on-site" congress configuration by virtual or hybrid meetings in order to (i) minimize the related GHG emissions and (ii) avoid penalizing colleagues who choose to follow the 1.5-degree path from sharing data and knowledge with the rest of our community. COVID prompted us to develop and adopt modern tools necessary for this transition. Let’s use them!

Scientists are increasingly aware that we must change our ways. Let's be proud trend setters among our peers. Several large congresses such as ICAR, Plant Molecular Biology or Plant Biology will take place in the coming year. They could be the first conferences of this size to change course towards a better future... or, maybe, one of the last antiquated holdouts.

Granted, a large hybrid meeting might not be trivial to organize and it may be a tiny drop in the ocean of changes humanity will have to perform to become sustainable. Yet, the action we are advocating for, as all others we should engage, is mandatory and this one is in (y)our hands.

Getty, L.N. (2021) To fly or not to fly in 2021? Nature 589: 155–157.

IPCC (2021) Climate Change AR6. The Physical Science Basis. SPM.

Passalacqua, A. (2021) The carbon footprint of a scientific community: A survey of the historians of mobility and their normalized yet abundant reliance on air travel. J. Transp. Hist. 42: 121–141.

Steckel, D. (2021) Trend towards virtual and hybrid conferences may be an effective climate change mitigation strategy. Nat. Commun. 12, 7324.

Thaller, A., Schreuer, A., Posch, A., and Will, M. (2021). Flying High in Academia — Willingness of University Staff to Perform Low-Carbon Behavior Change in Business Travel. Front. Sustain. 2.