Environmental sustainability of basic research: what to do and what to avoid?

The accelerated onset of the climate crisis and ecosystem degradation surpasses the earlier projections of the

IPCC, indicating an imminent and rapid decline in globalized human civilization within the coming decades.

Urgent measures are imperative to avert this trajectory. The HECAP+ community, encompassing High Energy

Physics, Cosmology, Astroparticle Physics, and Hadron and Nuclear Physics, faces direct implications due to

its distinctive carbon footprint and extended planning cycles of research projects that extend into a period

marked by economic and socio-political instability. Mitigating the environmental impact within our scientific

communities necessitates immediate action at individual, research group, and institutional levels. This talk

explores various strategies for minimizing the adverse effects on the natural environment, emphasizing the role

of internationally and culturally interconnected scientific communities as exemplars for a sustainable societal

transition towards a better world.