His experience travelling the globe and filming on location in places such as Bhutan, the Maldives and Peru is that local communities often don’t know about the perils of packaging waste, for example, because nobody has taught them. What’s more, in deprived, isolated or impoverished communities, people can sometimes be living in survival mode. When your primary need is clean water or enough food to eat, any other concern becomes secondary.
And yet many native people are far wiser, more caring and more knowledgeable about nature’s delicate ecosystems and the vital interconnectedness of species, including humans!
So, when Richard sees a body of water contaminated with pollutants or packaging waste, he doesn’t leap to blame or outrage. He gets curious. What are some of the questions he’s learned to ask and the assumptions he learned to challenge on his travels around the world? And what lessons are there here for event planners, especially those tasked with using their events portfolio to further ESG goals – environmental, social and governance?
Neglect doesnt always stem from ignorance
Scruffy or neglected areas close to a venue aren’t necessarily a reason to stay away. Could your event kickstart or add extra momentum to a local renewal project? Could your program bring in the resources, the talent or the wherewithal to help a local community group make a bigger, more positive impact?
Lack of knowledge isn't always a choice
If you’re an event planner on a mission – or with a client brief – to design a transformational event, consider bridging that transformation from your event participants to the local community. As Professor Greg Clark will argue in his session at IMEX Frankfurt, “The meetings and events industry needs a new ‘license to operate’ How?“. He’ll make the point that if our industry doesn’t fully embrace its local impact responsibilities, it may end up under scrutiny from society at large. As an example, he cites food and drink and questions the validity of attendees being served sumptuous meals when local citizens just doorsteps away might be in food poverty. .
Changing perspective from teaching to learning
As Richard explains, drone photography has changed our perspective on the natural world and increased our knowledge of endangered habitats, helping us face painful realities such as deforestation due to illegal logging in the Amazon Rainforest, for example. But it can also show us how quickly nature can recover, given half a chance.
Changing perspective together with asking different questions is a great tool for shaping a different experience.
What if every time we ran an event in a new destination, we recognized there’s both something to learn and something to give? What if we all added one or two new measures to our impact reporting, such as what did this destination teach us? What does it do better or differently to the way we do it at home? Can we bring those insights back to our community, our business or weave them into our next event RFP?
The magic of compounding
Taking small consistent actions is a bit like the magic of compounding – and you don’t need to understand how compounding functions to know that it works. Sharing a few of your back-office learnings with your delegates or your supply chain can create ripples of positive change way into the future. But you need to let go of ‘when’ and accept that you or your organization might not get full credit.
If you leave behind old, competitive ways of behaving and embrace a collaborative mindset, what could change?
Years ago, the IMEX team was pushing hard to eradicate use of foamcore and single-use vinyl (plastic) signage at IMEX Frankfurt. After many cycles of asking, our suppliers not only sourced eco-alternatives but, as prices dropped, they listed it in their catalog, instantly making it available to hundreds of other show organizers. In Las Vegas, one chef’s determination to source a (recyclable) foil-free pizza box for us had the same powerful knock-on effect.
