Strategic Sustainable Development of mega events : A pathway towards the climate-neutral BUGA of 2025 in Rostock

Sammanfattning

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the major current challenges and an urgent mitigation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from human activities is required for a sustainable future. The event sector is recognizing this need and is increasingly addressing its contributions to global GHG emissions. In this context, the German Federal GardenShow (BUGA) is exploring ways of organizing a climate neutral garden show in Rostock for the year 2025. Utilizingthe BUGA 2025 as a case study, this research project aimed at addressing the research gap regarding the event-GHG nexus by investigating pathways towards a climate-neutral event. As a contribution to this aim, it identified major driversand barriers shaping event-related GHG management. These findings resulted in a suggestion of indicators to evaluate events’ GHG mitigation and thereby provide a frame for future improvement in GHG management at events. The findings were generated through qualitative methods, namely a focus group discussion which applied the Frameworkfor Strategic Sustainable Development, a review of academic literature and other events’ sustainability reports and the application of the Process-based System Model to the case of BUGA 2025.