ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2024
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. This year, 52,000+ young leaders applied to join the Class of 2024 on 6,000+ campuses across 170 nations. 280+ campuses worldwide (just 5%) were selected to host the 4,000+ Millennium Fellows.

UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT COSTANZA MANCINI, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2024.
Yale University | New Haven, United States | Advancing SDG 13, SDG 4 & UNAI 9

" There is no community left estranged from the impacts of climate change, and I feel the urgency to contribute my time to help curb global warming. Climate change is one of the global challenges that require interdisciplinary thinking and fruitful collaboration, which is why joining the Millennium Fellowship cohort can help us all tackle our problems of interest with more awareness and efficacy. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Yale Flight Offsets Program
Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. Flight reliance is only expected to increase as developing countries access the wealth that made aviation such a common transportation choice in many developed countries.
Unfortunately, aviation is extremely hard to abate, due to the difficulty in finding a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) with the energy density levels of traditional jet fuel. Other than SAFs, important measures will help consumers avoid flights and shift to more sustainable transport modes, such as trains, as much as possible. These solutions, however, will come slowly. SAFs are far from being commercialized at scale; flight avoidance will require heavy consumer behavior changes that are hard to achieve in such a globalized world; alternative transportation modes rely on costly and long infrastructure changes and incentives. Therefore, to achieve our net zero targets, we need carbon offsets.
Yale should be at the forefront of these efforts for four reasons:
1. The Yale community heavily relies on flights.
2. As a rich institution, it should take the risk and invest in costly measures to help the world
get closer to net zero.
3. As an educational institution, it has the potential and responsibility to educate its
community about the carbon footprint of flying and help them reduce it.
4. Yale can lead by example by investing in high-quality carbon markets.
The goal of my project is therefore to voice these issues and goals to the Yale institution, and raise awareness on its responsibility to act upon them. I will use my experience with carbon markets to pinpoint specific pathways for action, to make sure that the carbon credits purchased are high-quality and transparent.
The initiative will create social impact by
1. Educating the Yale community and broader public on decarbonization, aviation, and high-quality carbon offsets.
2. Actively investing in high-quality carbon credits that will speed up good decarbonization of climate change mitigation projects.
About the Millennium Fellow
Costanza Mancini is a last year student at Yale University, studying Economics with certificates in Energy Studies and in Climate Science and Solutions. She is determined to contribute to climate change mitigation, particularly through the lense of climate finance. Costanza recognizes the scale of the climate challenge but finds solace and hope in the many individuals and organizations doing commendable work to drive change. She is thrilled to be a part of the Millennium Fellowship cohort and meet the many students invested in impacting communities around the workd, to be inspired by their work and contribute ideas. Costanza is originally from Italy and is a linguist at heart, speaking Italian, English, Spanish, and French.








