As event planners, take a closer look at the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs for short. Integrating the SDGs into events is an important step on the road to sustainability. With conscious event planning and implementation of sustainable practices, your events can also make an important contribution to solving global problems and at the same time become a role model for sustainability. For this reason, today we present "SDG 17 - Partnerships to Achieve the SDGs".

SDG 17 - Partnerships for the SDGs

SDG 17 seeks to ensure that all societal actors - business, academia, organized civil society, communities - contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

This is what SDG 17 means for events

SDG 17 is the most comprehensive of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It covers a wide variety of fields that embody a global partnership for sustainable development. For your events, this means forming multi-actor partnerships - with the goal of achieving sustainability together.

You, as an event planner or service provider, can help achieve this goal through trusted collaborations and sharing best practices.

Initiatives in the event industry

The good thing is that there are already initiatives by associations and institutions.

Net Zero Carbon Events

The Net Zero Carbon Events initiative aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 and halve them by 2030. Almost 500 signatories and supporters from the international event industry are taking part.

16 Steps Initiative

The 16 Steps Initiative is an initiative to achieve climate neutrality in the event industry by 2025. The initiative is supported by associations, companies, media and networks such as B.A.U.M. e.V. - Netzwerk für Nachhaltiges Wirtschaften, BNW Bundesverband nachhaltige Wirtschaft e.V., VDVO Verband der Veranstaltungsorganisatoren e.V., Netzwerk Meet Germany and many more.

EVVC

The 650 member venues in the European Association of Event Centers, or EVVC for short, have jointly set themselves two sustainable goals. They want to offer climate-neutral events across the board by 2030 and make their venues climate-neutral by 2040.

AUMA

Association of the German Trade Fair Industry (AUMA): The German trade fair industry will become climate-neutral by 2040. By 2025 at the latest, German trade fairs will supply themselves with 100 percent green electricity. As early as 2024, the German trade fair industry will make sustainability a requirement in tenders with its industry partners.

SECON - Event with several partners

The Sustainable Event Conference (SECON) is organized by GCB (German Convention Bureau) and EVVC (European Association of Event Centers) in cooperation with HSMA (Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association Germany), BDKV (Federal Association of the Concert and Event Industry) and VPLT (The Association for Media and Event Technology). The program includes lectures and workshops, open exchange and excursions.

These immediate actions at events pay into SDG 17

As an organizer of trade fairs and congresses, city festivals and sporting events, you can enter into country partnerships. In this way, you can give companies from developing countries the opportunity to present their products and services to their target group in Germany every year.

Inform and motivate your service providers to join you on the path to a sustainable future. Therefore, you should check your supply chains and see if there are any sustainable suppliers. Ask whether they cooperate with companies in developing countries that pay fair wages and support new projects that create prosperity, justice, security and peace.

Work with professional offset companies that compensate for unavoidable CO2 emissions from your event. You can also use this to support projects in developing countries and thus support the motto of the SDGs "Leave no one behind".

In the live entertainment area, you can book artists who have social standards to support their local community. For example, there are artists who take young people off the streets and do sports and acrobatics with them, offering prospects. For example, Joss Stone has supported local NGOs and local artists in every country during her world tour in almost 200 countries.

Another idea relates to the cooperation of event locations. For example, all locations in the Rhine-Main area commit to no longer holding events on their premises that are not sustainable. This eliminates the fear of distortion of competition.

Conclusion

If sustainable events become the standard, their high reach and variety creates an enormous potential to change the world in a positive way! This is how - also your? - Events become part of the solution - be an active part of it.

More information

Sabine Böhling, consultant, trainer and lecturer for sustainability and CSR, and Stefan Lohmann, expert for live entertainment concepts and founder of Sustainable Event Solutions, present the 17 SDGs and apply them to events. This series first appeared on tw-media, the meetings industry.

• more about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals
• more about the 16 Steps Initiative