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Graduate Student or Post Graduate
01 January 2020 - 30 August 2021
Technician or Assistant
01 April 2019 - 01 January 2020
I am a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki Department of Geosciences and Geography. My research group, the Earth Change Observation Laboratory (ECHOLAB) studies environmental change with the help of remote sensing and geospatial data, with a focus on the Global South. There my research looks into the reduction and offsetting of carbon emissions resulting from researcher mobility in Finnish universities. My past work has focused on participatory democracy and budgeting at the Center for Consumer Society Research, and permafrost peatland hydrology at the Environmental Change Research Unit (ECRU) at the University of Helsinki.
With the simultaneous rise of concern about the climate crisis and the growing internationalization of research institutions, academic mobility poses an “academic paradox”: knowledge of the environmental harm of aviation does not necessarily translate into action. Universities must make changes to their mobility habits if they wish to comply with governmental carbon neutrality targets and lead with example. This research looks at Finland’s 14 universities and identifies the patterns and trends of academic mobility from a series of reports provided by the universities and their travel agencies. Moreover, we mapped the travel destinations to understand the scope of Finnish academic travel. The data revealed that Finnish universities are in different states of sustainability: some acting as clear trendsetters and others lagging. The results show that although the universities are performing well in some areas, as in preferring European destinations over intercontinental ones, there are still areas of improvement related to stopover reduction, the number of 1- and 2-day trips, and alternative transport forms to aviation. There is also a need for the standardization of targets and emission calculators. These key development areas are posed as recommendations through which the universities could easily reduce the carbon footprint of their mobility.
Veronica Ahonen; Mika Siljander; Petri Pellikka; Tino Johansson; Mikko Rask. The Sustainability of Academic Air Mobility in Finnish Universities. Sustainability 2021, 13, 2948 .
AMA StyleVeronica Ahonen, Mika Siljander, Petri Pellikka, Tino Johansson, Mikko Rask. The Sustainability of Academic Air Mobility in Finnish Universities. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (5):2948.
Chicago/Turabian StyleVeronica Ahonen; Mika Siljander; Petri Pellikka; Tino Johansson; Mikko Rask. 2021. "The Sustainability of Academic Air Mobility in Finnish Universities." Sustainability 13, no. 5: 2948.