Tuesday
Jan 06th
| “Meeting the Future” launched on World Environment Day 2008 |
|
|
|
| Published by Ozgur Tore | |
| Saturday, 07 June 2008 | |
|
VisitDenmark and the Green Meetings Industry Council launch a new “Meeting the Future” initiative on the United Nations World Environment Day, the 5th June -
aimed at consolidating the sustainability efforts being done around the world by the meetings industry. As host nation for the next UN climate change conference (COP 15) in December 2009, VisitDenmark, the Official Tourism Organisation of Denmark, has joined forces with the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) to unite the great efforts of Meetings Industry professionals worldwide and make meetings more sustainable in the future. These days, the biggest challenge of the Global Meetings Industry – transportation providers, destination management corporations, agencies, hotel chains, meeting venues, trade associations etc. - is to incorporate elements of sustainability within its industry. To date, the Meetings Industry has had no single approach to ensuring this happening. Many major players are approaching the subject from different angles, but with little cohesion and/or a single point of direction. “Meeting the Future” is an initiative developed to create a unified, integrated and cohesive global response to climate change from the meetings industry. At the Green Meetings Industry Council’s annual conference in Vancouver on 22 February 2008 – the two organisations, met up with a range of major players within the Meetings Industry and agreed to address the issues raised by VisitDenmark and create some tangible solutions to address the challenge. The key objectives will be to bring together the meetings industry leadership to discuss, create and agree a unified global response to climate change within all sectors of the meetings industry and to produce an industry positioning paper that can be presented at the UN conference. Following the Vancouver conference, VisitDenmark appointed a “Meeting the Future” Steering committee including representatives from, amongst others, MCI, Reed Travel Exhibitions and Meeting Strategies Worldwide who have been busy preparing a 1st draft of the industry statement. The final result will be presented at the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference (COP15) held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. To ensure that “Meeting the Future” initiative truly reflects the needs of the whole Meetings Industry, the Steering Committee wishes to extend participation in this scheme to a much wider audience by inviting Meetings Industry organisations and associations worldwide for their participation and engagement. Invitations to engage in this process will be going out shortly. Project Co-ordinator of the “Meeting the Future” initiative, Jonathan Cohen, comments: “Meeting the Future” is about engaging and motivating Meetings professionals to reduce the environmental impact of staging meetings in the future. VisitDenmark and the Green Meetings Industry Council are happy to set the stage for this and to create awareness about the new scheme, we deliberately aim high with the “ratification” of an industry positioning paper at the UN COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Hopefully, this strategy will increase the understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues within our own industry and help creating innovative solutions for reducing climate changes within the global meetings industry community on a long-tem basis”.. |
|
| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 January 2009 ) |