[SUSTA I NAB I L I TY Sustainability is higher on the priority list than ever as the world counts down to the 2030 targets and net zero by 2050. Event organisers and business leaders have an important role to play. All experts agree, making events sustainable has become essential for success in today’s meetings and conference industry, and it has three-fold benefits: environmental, social and economic. “Businesses are now starting to think beyond the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and one of the stand-outs for them is how sustainability is going to play a key role,” says Business Events Industry Aotearoa (BEIA) chief executive Lisa Hopkins. At its annual conference in Napier last month, BEIA announced it will lead New Zealand’s Business Events Sustainability Project, partnering with Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) to provide a framework and accreditation for all members to contribute toward New Zealand’s sustainability goals. On World Decarbonisation Day at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), the international meetings and events industry led the way, presenting a Net Zero Carbon Events Roadmap, sharing how they plan to drastically reduce the sector's carbon emissions and achieve net zero for the business events sector by 2050 at the latest. The Global Destination Sustainability Index (GDS-Index) launched by IMEX, ICCA (International Congress and Convention Association) and MCI in 2016 has now become one of the industry’s leading sustainable destination benchmarking and performance improvement programmes, aligned with the High priority ~ Sustainability is key to business event success UN Sustainable Development Goals and the GSTC Destination Criteria. Jessica Vandy is the Asia-Pacific representative for the GDS Movement, based in New Zealand. She says Asia Pacific centres using the index include Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Singapore, Sapporo, Bangkok, and Sarawak. “We are expecting a significant increase in 2023 and 2024 as more destinations, including New Zealand work towards their sustainability goals.” In Aotearoa New Zealand, the internationally recognised Toitū Envirocare programme offers carbon management and carbon neutral certifications including the tools needed to measure, reduce and offset greenhouse gas emissions, through its Toitū carbonreduce and Toitū net carbonzero Programmes. WALKING THE TALK “We’ve come a long way in terms of our understanding of sustainability in the last three years, but we also have a long way to go to ensure all of our business events sector By Anabel Darby Christchurch Airport TableHub [30] meeting newz [nov dec] 2022
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