To Fly or not to Fly - That's the question

“Why are you wearing that raincoat”, I asked my teammate around 20 years back. It was above 30 degrees Celsius and I was on the football pitch to prepare with my team for the new season. “I want to lose some pounds and this will make me sweat more”, he answered with sweat pearls dripping from his tomato-red forehead. As the body doesn’t get a chance to cool off, it didn’t really feel a healthy thing for me to do…?

Fast forward to today and I am gazing out of the window of an airplane on my way back from New Delhi to Amsterdam. I am always mesmerized by the sight of the warm orange glow the sunset casts over the cloud cover just before night kicks in. I get to think about the conversation I had with my teammate. With all the news about global warming and the impact on our environment at the moment, and having experienced the omnipresent smog in India once more, I imagine the cloud cover to be that rain coat and the earth not being able to properly cool off from all the greenhouse gas emissions that we, humans, artificially produce.?

Impact

I want to share an honest story. My work entails ‘making an impact’. To enable smallholder farmers to lift themselves out of poverty, preferably with practices that do no harm to nature or rather, improve the health of the soil, the water or the air. In this way, farmers can increase their productivity by letting nature work with him and not for him. Our sector ecosystem consists of NGOs, FIs, agtech start-ups, private sector players, farmer producer organization and government bodies, which I frequently meet face-to-face during my travels. We talk about how to set up programs and structure financial instruments in such a way that we can improve the living standards of the 130 million smallholder farmers and their families in India by providing access to affordable finance.?

And here I am. Flying in one of the most polluting machines mankind has ever witnessed - an airplane. To make an impact. Those words are increasingly providing me with mixed feelings as I get on a plane again to visit India. Even though I totally love my job and am confident that we push the needle step by step in India to reach our goals, I am aware that I am also making an impact, but a negative one, on the earth’s ecosystem by my means of air travel. While considering the rest of the impact space with so many people working for foundations, NGOs and investment firms flying all across the globe, I am wondering how many hectares of agroforestry models it takes to compensate for all the flight movements of my fellow colleagues.??

I believe there are very few cases that really justify intercontinental travel when taking into account the impact on earth’s atmosphere. For e.g. there are 61 countries in the world where an individual produces less CO2 in a year than one return ticket Amsterdam – Delhi alone (source: How your flight emits as much CO2 as many people do in a year | Carbon footprints | The Guardian). I know, pretty crazy, right? I tend to believe my work allows for that to a certain extent since our efforts are aimed at supporting the local communities and financial system to unlock capital for the agricultural sector. When the code has been cracked and enough mainstream capital will flow to the rural areas, my work will be done (but I probably need to fly somewhere else ??).?

What to do

However, merely the intentions of our work would be an easy way out to justify for our travel behaviour. Our foundation is mindful of this paradox and therefore we operate along the following two principles:?

• Local teams. Even though we are a Dutch foundation, we rely strongly on our local colleagues. As a program manager I coordinate and oversee our activities from our head office in Utrecht, but getting things done in a country where you are not a native is always challenging. Our local team is therefore our most valuable asset to build a solid network in the sector, develop our work in the local context ánd prevents me from flying back and forth all the time. It helps me in making my time worthwhile when traveling to the country and not having to get on a plane for just a two-day conference or field visit.?
• Considerate approach. The period in which Covid-19 was keeping us all at our homes taught us that business can also be done virtually. But not all business. Building and maintaining relationships is mostly an exercise that needs face-to-face contact. And relationships and collaborations are key for us to perform. Hence, every time I plan a new visit to India, I think of the positive impact it must have for the work we do. Usually, my schedule is a mix of discussing (new) transactions with partners, making plans for our portfolio with my local team, visiting projects in the field and attending or organizing a conference. Therefore, I choose to have a minimum number of days to visit the country which is usually around 10. ?

Obviously, these measures will never fully compensate for any kind of air travel. However, it does indicate that when one of my colleagues or myself travels, we consider at least the balance between the positive effects of our visit to the country as opposed to the negative effects stemming from the emissions. That is what I at a bare minimum expect from an organization that must have its employees to travel to do their jobs.?

Also, as a consequence of all these internal deliberations, I noticed in my private life that I started thinking of holiday destinations closer to my doorstep which can be visited by train. To me the train is a perfect way of traveling as you can usually sit more comfortably than in a plane, you have some scenery to watch, and you typically arrive in the city centre, whereas a plane lands on an airport far away from your final destination causing you to travel some more by taxi. It would be great if the railway system in India improves, so that at least my domestic flights can be removed from my schedule. However, in the end the best solution would be that my job is not necessary anymore or we have access to clean airplanes ???

Now that the sun disappeared below the horizon and the only thing I see is the pitch dark of the night, my wish is that the earth can remove its rain coat soon and can properly cool off again. But this can only be done if we all chip in.?

I am curious to know how other (impact-oriented) organizations experience this paradox? What are your views on this? And what do you think are other good practices? Let me know!?