A number of imminent, important happenings may help bring order and support to meetings industry professionals seeking to improve their commitment to the organization of sustainable events. First, the release of a report on the organization of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen (COP15) offers among the most recent examples of a sustainable event report. Exhaustive in detail and revealing of both planner failings and successes, the report will provide concrete examples of specific actions planners (and communities) can, and should, take to improve chances for a more responsible event. COP15, the first United Nations event to successfully seek compliance with the BS8901 sustainable event management standard , becomes the first to submit an event assessment report to feature Global Reporting Initiative compliance.

A corollary document to the COP15 report will also be released next week. Titled the “Copenhagen Sustainable Meetings Protocol” (CSMP), the whitepaper seeks to provide a framework for planners to integrate existing local and international certifications and standards for sustainable event management. Placing a special focus on BS8901, the APEX green meetings standards and the Global Reporting initiative for events, the CSMP gives clear guidance for developing strategy and for stakeholder engagement, which was a special hallmark of the COP15 event planning process. MCI Sustainability Services is proud to have authored the documents and to have participated in the watershed event and vibrant discussions which informed them. Information about the release of the documents can be found here next week. Here, too. For more sustainable events, stay tuned!

Copenhagen Bike Capital of the World

As you probably have read, over 37% of the Danes use the bicycle daily. The mayor’s goal is 50% and you can see his plan here.

You could understand these fantastic figures in a country with a warm climate – but look at the pictures. Its snowing – cold – and windy and those sust-Dane-able Danes are out there on their bicycles. This tenacity and determination is why the Danes are leading the world in climate solutions.

Performance by Commitment

The lovely smiling face is Sandra from the Hotel Guldsmeden. She is the general manager and owner of the Axel and group. For me, the Axel is one of the top performing sustainable hotels in Copenhagen and probably in Europe. Their attitude to life, services, the community and the planet is exceptional. Sandra and the team decide to pursue and now have achieved GreenGlobe certification. That’s interesting when the majority of the city is GreenKey – however as Sandra commented; GreenKey was to easy for us to achieve. We wanted a standard that would push us to get even better.

In the photo Sandra was giving me a lift to the train-station. Now that is what I call Danish Service.

If our teams in MCI Copenhagen were not busy enough with cop15, for the last couple of days they have been providing PCO services for the Copenhagen Climate Summit for Mayor

The City Hall of Copenhagen has seen its fair share of political hot shots, but the gathering of more than 80 high-profile mayors from some of the biggest cities in the world, was impressive.

Read more about it here:

Governor Arnold at the Mayors Climate Summit

Vestas Wind Turbine Installed for COP15

The UNFCCC secretariat in Bonn has an initial estimate of the overall emissions from COP15 at 40,500 tonnes of CO2. However with the greater number of attendees the figure will be much higher.

The government will offset the emisions via a project in Bangladesh which involves replacing outdated brick kilns in Dhaka. The investment will be approx 700.000€. This is probably one of the largest conferences ever offset.

At the Bella Center a wind turbine was installed as an energy showcase. The turbine generates energy that feeds the national grid. The lifecycle carbon impact of the turbine is more than the carbon saved by the energy generated upto COP15. However if it stays in place post  cop15 then it will start to generate long term carbon benefits.

Its important to mention that the best carbon strategy is always reduce and this is what the government team have been focused on.

More information can be found www.sustainability.cop15.dk or read this excellent post at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/copenhagen-footprint-up-in-smoke.php

For those of us with MCI Sustainability Services, who have worked behind the scenes to help document and guide the process, it’s nothing short of thrilling.  As you can see with the smile on Guy’s face.

The arrival at this stage of a long and difficult process allows us to make the following observations:

1)  The organizers of COP15, Jan-Christoph Napierski in particular, are highly organized and skilled in the arts of observing good, systematic approaches which included impressive effort to identify and engage their stakeholders.

2) No planners or stakeholders were injured in the process to document COP15 compliance with BS8901. In other words, it’s possible and even recommended that others work to pursue higher standards of sustainable events.

Over the next several weeks, we will be working hard to capture the details and processes behind the organization of the event and will integrate them into a document called ‘The Copenhagen Sustainable Meetings Protocol’.  Look for more information about the CSMP here

Look for more information about sustainable aspects of COP15 at their web page

Industry should play its part in the fight against climate change by persuading governments to aid carbon cuts rather than lobbying against them, the U.N. Secretary-General told CEOs in Copenhagen today.

Business leaders met in Denmark today at the World Business Summit on Climate change to try to unite behind a common call for long-term climate policies, ahead of the U.N. conference in December designed to forge a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

“For those who are directly or implicitly lobbying against climate action I have a clear message: your ideas are out of date and you are running out of time,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting of more than 500 business leaders.

“The smart money is on the green economy,” he said. “Leaders sometimes are weak because they are short-sighted to get the votes,” he added, urging businesses to lobby for carbon cuts.

Full coverage of the speech can be found here or a written version on the UN Global Compact web site.

MCI is the event logistics and sustainability consulting partner for the World Business Summit on Climate Change, the UN Climate Change Conference, the World Mayors Summit on Climate Change and the UN Global Compact leaders summit

In the attached presentation you can hear Jan-Christoph Napierski, head of Greening for COP15, talk about his challenges and priorities to increase the sustainability of the event.

Jan-Christoph in combination with 11 organisers of other key Copenhagen events have formed the Copenhagen Green Events Taskforce. Together with the IOC, World Out Games, the World Business Summit on climate change, the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change and others, the taskforce meets regular to address sustainability issues and challenges. Together they share best practice, and have lobbied and leveraged their influence to create change in the Danish meetings market place. This type of initiative is a first in its kind based on scale and stakeholder engagement.

More to come about the Copenhagen initiatives in the future.

MCI is the PCO for COP15, the World Business summit on Climate change, and the IOC conference. We are also consultants to the Bella Center