Green. Not for profit Positive Impact Events explain how the campaign will work and why this years campaign is more important than ever.
‘For 24 hours over Earth Day event professionals will be sharing best practice on how their events are used to further the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This conversation is accessible to all and we encourage everyone to share their best practice using #eventscreatechange and #earthday.’

This Earth Day takes place at a time when the pause in movement of humans across the planet has provided the opportunity for pollution levels to decrease, water quality to improve and other examples of environmental restoration. When the world jumps back into action post COVID-19 will everyone forget this or will this shape our future event behaviour?

Miguel Naranjo, Programme Officer at the UNFCCC secretariat, adds: ‘One of the last times I had the opportunity to speak to the global event community was in February 2020 at Meeting Professionals International’s ‘European Meetings and Events Conference’. At that time, I communicated that if we did not act to address climate change urgently, the future of events was set to change, just like the rest of society, very soon and not for good. Some of the feedback was that this statement seemed extreme. A few months later, our world has changed in the blink of an eye, a preview of the type of situations we may face due to climate change impacts. We want to invite all event professionals to champion climate action in their lives, in their companies, and in the events they organize, including by highlighting the difference that events make and can make in this regard.’

According to research undertaken by the team at Positive Impact Events in 2019 in a review of 200 corporate sustainability reports there was no reference to ‘events’. In 2020 a similar study was started (and stopped due to COVID-19) but there was a marked increase in reference to ‘events’ with every reference referring to how digital strategies had been employed to lower the carbon footprint caused by events.

CEO of Positive Impact Events Fiona Pelham, suggests now is the time for the industry to act: ‘There will always be actions we can take to improve our environmental impact however the most important thing we can do right now as an industry is to shout very loudly about the positive impact of events. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are a framework being followed by business’ and governments around the world. Events bring people together so those goals can be met and that story is vital for us to tell. During Earth Day we have created opportunities for people to tell the story of the impact which their events have. This approach is part of a wider campaign we are running
to empower over 100,000 #eventprofs to be in action building the future of how human connection happens.’

To be part of Earth Day visit: https://www.positiveimpactevents.com/resources/earthday-2020

To understand more about the campaign to empower 100,000 #eventprofs to be in action building the future of how human connection happens, visit: https://www.positiveimpactevents.com/