Event greening : is this concept providing a serious platform for sustainability best practice

[摘要] Large scale events have historically been ignored by those involved in the sustainability debate.However there is growing realization that major events can have significant environmental andsocio-economic impacts and opportunities. This has been highlighted by the global growth of aphenomenon which has become known as event greening. The hosting of a major event like theOlympic Games comes with benefits and problems to the host city or region. The question is canthe benefits be maximised and the problems minimised? This thesis shows that events can behosted in a manner that contributes positively to the host city and limits the negative impacts, byincorporating principles of sustainable development with in the event management plan. This isknown as event greening. Managing an event in a way that minimizes negative impacts andmaximizes positive impacts produces results that are true reflections of success of a major event(GoJ Report, 2003).Event greening has been evolving since the early 1990's and has arguable reached a point whereabsolute definition and standardisation is required to ensure its authenticity and integrity into thefuture. As the practice of event greening programmes occurs more and more so the need for abenchmarking tool to ascertain true measurable all encompassing impacts of events becomesmore essential. The use of a Sustainability Rating System was employed as a way of measuringthe percentage sustainability an event greening project or programme is actually achieving. Thissystem was developed as a way of determining whether event greening is in fact contributing tosustainable development or is it another attempt at perceived sustainability best practice knownas green washing. A selection of event greening projects is measured according to theSustainability Rating System and the results show event greening is progressively contributing toglobal sustainable development best practice. This thesis also suggests that event greening isevolving into a sophisticated mechanism for implementing sustainable development best practicethrough mega- events.This research is a prelude to developing an assessment tool and a standard for event greening.The use of the Sustainability Rating System in this thesis and the discussed results propose thismethod as an adequate rudimentary tool which can be used to assess in a broad way the extent ofsustainability of an event greening programme. This method and the information in this thesis areintended to be used as a first step in the development of an industry event greening measuringand evaluating standard or tool. It is intended that this thesis will act as a catalyst for furtherresearch and development into standards, benchmarking and possibly even certification processesfor event greening.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University