Mission Impossible?

In this consultation period, the bodies behind the pledge want to ensure everyone in the events industry can sign up for the process, review and have their say. And by everyone, they mean everyone – without a paywall barrier or strict joining criteria, the new initiative aims to connect stakeholders in the corporate, professional, academic and destination communities that are committed to climate action.

Another challenge the meetings and events industry struggles with is defining itself and what it’s made up of – something that was made abundantly clear throughout the pandemic when funds weren’t allocated to the industry because, well, what is the industry?

This is something the Net Zero Carbon Events initiative aims to define.

“If we say we want to halve our emissions by 2030, we need to have the tools to measure that and we need an industry-wide approach. We will have dialogue about how to measure scope one, scope two and scope three emissions,” Hattendorf notes.

But issues of attribution and responsibility still loom large. “Scope one we can measure directly, scope two we can measure as an industry, but scope three gets tricky. For example, when a person takes a plane to come to an event, are those emissions attributed to the airline industry, because the person is flying, or are they the responsibility of the events industry due to the fact the person is flying to attend their event? Or is it the responsibility of the company that person is representing?” Hattendorf adds.

This initiative aims to bring people together and smooth out the creases in the attribution conundrum.

The Net Zero Carbon Events initiative already has some big names signed up, including UFI, IMEX Group and ICCA, and the support from the UNFCCC helps establish this initiative as credible.

So how does it plan to achieve these targets?

• Jointly communicate our industry’s commitment to tackling climate change and driving towards net-zero by 2050
• Develop common methodologies for measuring the industry’s direct, indirect and supply chain greenhouse gas emissions
• Construct an industry-wide roadmap towards net-zero by 2050, and emissions reductions by 2030 in line with the Paris Agreement, with support and guidance on key issues
• Foster collaboration with suppliers and customers to ensure alignment and common approaches
• Establish common mechanisms for reporting progress and sharing best practice

These commitments, it claims, provide the route to establishing a net-zero events industry, but is it feasible and will it bend the emissions curve?

Events are not sustainable. We really should not be doing events the way we are, but events are crucial for face-to-face contact and what they can achieve. But they must become more sustainable.

We want our corporate events community to be involved in this initiative because we want them to be ahead of the curve. There’s a big push from stakeholders to look at their CO2 output and we want our members to be able to report back to their decision-makers and say, ‘We’re involved in this initiative’ and this initiative is for the whole of the international events industry, it’s not just UK or European focussed.

I know there are other initiatives out there, but everyone has got too personal about it. For example, the brand is often put before the actual initiative. There are plenty of people doing this, but nobody is working together because they think their brand is more important.

This initiative exists to strip away the politics from sustainability initiatives and get things done. This whole proprietor thing around sustainability shouldn't exist either. It all comes back to this thing about monetising sustainability.

If we don’t work together and stop putting our brand in front of sustainability and doing what needs to happen, we won’t have an industry.

The catalysing of action is a very critical thing right now, and it’s an important initiative from JMIC. It’s a shame that our industry could not really align globally as other organisations are working on similar projects such as Positive Impact, isla, EIC (Events Industry Council) and now this one. However, this is to be expected, with all the underlying politics and egos.

The five goals are well thought out, and with the real focus on sustainability right now could deliver meaningful progress. However, the devil is in the detail and what happens next. We have to keep measurement and reporting simple and relatively easy.

It's important to not lose sight of the big picture. We have to make our industry carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest and have at least 60 per cent reduction by 2030. This requires collaboration and innovation on a scale we have never seen before. This means we must align methodologies and approaches, actions, and communication. We will see if our industry can push the egos aside and properly collaborate to deliver on these and many other pledges.

From 10 years of experience developing the GDS-Index, a collaboration of this type requires long term commitment, the right partners, robust business and funding models, reliable IT tools, consistent communications, and a skilled team to implement all of this.

Let’s hope JMIC can deliver.

When the scientists of the IPCC published their key report on meeting the 1.5C climate target in 2018 they said it meant 'rapid, far reaching & unprecedented changes in all aspects of society'. That means every sector, including the international meetings and events industry needs credible plans and specific targets to be compatible with the climate goals, and to be implementing them now – and not merely airing aspirations, pledges and promises that are easy to break.

We know rapid change is possible in this sector because almost overnight countless international meetings reinvented themselves to occur online, taking away the need for international flights. That lesson about avoiding emissions at source needs to be learned, because we've seen how forests planted for offset schemes can go up in flames in our warming world.

Reducing unnecessary travel should be a key design feature of any international meeting from now on. We know it’s possible, and saves time, money, and air pollution.

The announcement of a Net Zero pledge for events from global associations shows the tide is really turning for the sustainability narrative within our industry. As an organisation dedicated to tackling the challenges our industry faces, we welcome the appetite for change.

Our action-focused plans for the next 18 months will help move this agenda forward, and we’re eager to see how the pledge translates into genuine, regenerative action.

It’s shocking but not surprising that this industry initiative makes no mention of the urgent need to reduce aviation emissions – the thorn in the side of any net-zero plans for international events. Flying is an incredibly difficult sector to decarbonise, and its emissions are accelerating, growing by 28.5 per cent between 2010 and 2020. It will be interesting to see how the Net Zero Carbon Events pledge addresses this.

If efforts are not made to reduce the necessity of flying within the events industry, then the sector will be responsible for driving the climate crisis, not helping to address it. Fortunately, the events industry is incredibly well-placed to enable and encourage more sustainable forms of travel and tourism, showing other industries what it means to truly embrace net-zero. But to do this requires honesty and that must start with the question: what unsustainable practices does this industry rely on?

While there are many initiatives that work on an operational level, offering small players a way to support the UN in the climate work, these are mostly on a company level. There’s nothing on an industry-wide level.

It's a journey of many steps and the steps right now are very much the policies that we need to pledge, as an industry, and globally. If we continue to pledge as single companies or single segments, then we haven't learned what we all told each other over the last 12 months, in virtual meetings and on conference stages, that we need to work together going forward.

Then there will be lots of operational planning and projects to work on so we will need each and every resource we have in the industry to make sure we can fulfil the pledge.

For example, what Guy Bigwood is doing with the Global Destination Sustainability Index and the metrics from that are a big part of the conversation. The work Fiona Pelham is doing with Positive Impact, helping small companies qualify for the race to net zero is great. These companies can prove that they are part of the solution which will qualify them to fulfil the measurement criteria for the policy level.

We need to walk our own talk. If we fall back into squabbling and saying, ‘but this is stepping on my toes here’ and ‘I'm not sure that is part of my strategic plan’, then we will fail.