Sail to the COP Blog #3: Solving big hairy questions
EIT Climate-KIC supports the Sail to the COP initiative. 36 climate change agents sail to the COP in Chile to present a road map about sustainable travel. During the sailing trip they are working on big hairy questions about how to make traveling more sustainable and how to solve the societal behaviour change issues around this topic. They came very well prepared on board, and managed to go full speed ahead with the challenges of their partners Prorail, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment and Wageningen University and Research.
This is the third blog of our alumnus Santeri Lehtonen, who will facilitate the 1st Atlantic Ocean Climathon that will be organised from 24 to 26 October on board of the ship.
Blog #3 – ‘Solving big hairy questions’
In the past weeks I was part of the Problem Analysis group and we tried to find answers on the question ‘Why don’t people use sustainable alternative modes for travel?’
Setting up an Issue Tree, helped us to visualise the ecosystem of the travel industry. We arrived at 
many interesting issues, including; governance and decision-making within organisations and companies related to staff travel is antiquated and often does not consider the climate impacts of travel at all, even if the mission statement of the company is ‘green’. Secondly, the poor data availability and multiple knowledge owners in Europe constrict the capabilities for multi modal ticketing and erode opportunities for start-ups to build data based solutions within European mobility.
Thirdly, we recognised the vicious cycle of supply and demand within alternative options to aviation. For example, if there’s no demand for good zeppelin or night train travel, companies and governments don’t recognise the business opportunities, and therefore do not invest, and hence people cannot use them and therefore do not know to demand them.
We discussed many other interesting topics too of course. Now we have been split up to new ‘Solutions’ groups. I am in the ‘Innovation’ group, meaning that we are trying to find solutions within redesigning business models of sustainable travel modes, and considering incentives for governments, individuals and businesses to prioritise low carbon mobility. We will work further with this within the Climathon and after to prepare a more diverse portfolio in preparation for the COP.
I am really looking forward to the upcoming days to help my friends to the next phase in our process of developing a roadmap for sustainable travel during our Climathon. And of course to be part of this global initiative as on 25 October over 120 cities throughout the whole world, will tackle their climate challenges.
In the next blog I will share with you the outcomes of the 1st Atlantic Ocean Climathon.
Santo
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