How to reduce the environmental impacts of international cooperation?

The objective of the ONE Project (2020–2022) is to strengthen the ability to engage in productive virtual collaboration within international projects. At the same time, this reduces the travel and related environmental impact. The project also aims to increase the environmental knowledge and virtual collaboration competences of higher education leaders and staff.

The new Environmental Policy of ONE gives examples how the project itself cuts down its environmental impact.

“The project name ‘ONE’ comes from one of our objectives: we will have just one face-to-face meeting during this 2-year-project”, says Päivi Kananen, the International Coordinator from the Open University of University of Jyväskylä.

Päivi Kananen is the coordinator of the ONE work package called “ONE Virtual Collaboration Toolkit”. It will present the best tools to sustainable international cooperation based on practical experience with guidance on how to integrate them into use.

Online doesn’t automatically mean environment friendly

Digitalisation has reduced the need for live meetings. Virtual meeting is usually greener than travelling, but ONE Project wants to awaken an understanding of the effects of online work on its Environmental Policy document.

“Some people might think, that working online is always green, but there’s also ways to reduce the environmental impacts of virtual collaboration. For example, in the ONE Project we are keeping data volumes as small as possible, we prefer digital files over printed files, and we are avoiding video streaming in our meetings, because they take more energy than voice connections”, tells Päivi Kananen.

Read more:

• The ONE Project website
• The Environmental Policy of the ONE Project
• JYU.Wisdom: JYU can be carbon neutral by 2030 at the latest

_{(Image: Bill Oxford)}