The role of green events in a green economy

Abstract

Events are a very distinctive and visible component of the tourism sector and a good ‘bellwether’ of progress to sustainability. A green economy requires rebooting an economy to one based on sustainability principles. Tourism and its related components such as events, can make a major contribution to the green economy. An effective way to make such a green economy contribution is to draw lessons from best practices in the tourism and events domain, which is what this chapter does. The chapter first documents the literature on green events and argues that very limited progress has been made. Most events have made minimal progress to sustainability and are best described as token efforts.