With 4.2 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year, the Climatology team has a smaller carbon footprint than many of its neighbours. This is partly because its research site is just a ski trip away ! Your challenge : to find a way to halve its carbon footprint without negatively impacting its research activities, which focus precisely on climate change and its consequences.

Why does the Earth shake ? How does a fracture propagate through the Earth’s crust ? Can we predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions ? These are the questions you will be exploring. To do so, you will install sensors in the Alps and in various seismic zones around the world, analyse geophysical data and create models. Your carbon footprint is 6.2 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per person per year. Will you manage to reduce this by 50%, so that your research complies with IPCC recommendations, while maintaining strong collaborations with partners in the Global South ?

How do mountain ranges and mineral deposits form ? What shapes our landscapes ? These are the questions you will be exploring. To answer them, you will collect precious rock samples from key sites, whether just a stone’s throw from the lab on the edge of the Alps or on the other side of the world, and analyse geophysical and geochemical data. Your carbon footprint is 4.35 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per person per year. Your challenge : reduce this by 50%, while maintaining the quality of your research as much as possible, preserving your interactions with partners in the Global South and without penalising young researchers. It’s up to you !

What happens to contaminants in the environment, how can their toxicity and associated risks be assessed, and how can innovative decontamination methods be proposed ? These are the questions you will be exploring. To do so, you take samples from contaminated sites, both locally and in partner countries in the Global South. You carry out chemical and synchrotron analyses. Your carbon footprint stands at 6.4 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per person per year. Will you manage to reduce this by 50%, while preserving the quality and impact of your research as much as possible, without stifling the creativity of your young researchers ? The discussions are set to be lively in this team of strong personalities !

Your LMI team faces the greatest challenge, as it facilitates operational collaboration between French, Vietnamese and Thai researchers and engineers within the framework of a joint international laboratory. You will undertake numerous long-haul trips as well as oceanographic expeditions in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Will you succeed in reducing your team’s carbon footprint by at least half, currently 9.0 tCO₂e/person/year, while maintaining the momentum of research and North-South collaborative links in a spirit of equity and climate justice ?

Your team is a multidisciplinary group of researchers in environmental sciences and the humanities and social sciences. Your research focuses on the relationships between societies and their environments in the northern and southern Mediterranean. Data collection, ecological surveys, sociological surveys, anthropological observations and fieldwork in the study areas seem essential to inform your scientific inquiries. How, then, can you reconcile your research missions with your values while limiting your CO₂ emissions ?

Ocean circulation, its current, past and future role in the climate and terrestrial biogeochemical cycles, as well as the functioning of open-ocean marine ecosystems, are the wide-ranging topics studied by your oceanography team. You primarily use computer models that must be run on national supercomputers. Links with teams conducting observations at sea also exist, mainly through the joint supervision of PhD and postdoctoral researchers. The team’s current carbon footprint is 71 tCO₂e per year, or 7.1 tCO₂e/year/person. Your aim is to reduce this footprint by at least 50%, while maintaining the highest possible scientific standards and enabling young researchers to build their collaborations.

In this computer science team based in the Paris region, the research topics are varied : artificial intelligence, image processing, parallel computing and human-computer interaction. This work generally requires computing resources, mainly external computing centres. Publications are mainly presented at conferences rather than in journals, as these fields evolve very rapidly. In recent years, some research topics have shifted towards environmental applications, such as optimising energy consumption. Your current footprint : 6.7 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per person per year. Your challenge : reduce this by at least 50%, while maintaining the quality of your research as much as possible and enabling research staff to keep their networks active !

Your team is studying the water cycle in South America, hence your carbon footprint of 6.3 tCO₂e/year/person. The team is gradually moving towards the critical zone community. There is a consensus on the scale of the damage done to this thin layer that sustains life. But discussions are becoming heated. Some believe that the team’s research is essential to “save the world” and must be maintained “whatever the cost”, while others are campaigning to scale back operations. In this tense atmosphere, will you manage to cut your carbon footprint by 50% while restoring a calm and stimulating atmosphere, essential for maintaining high-quality science in a field where progress is made through collective effort ?