Sustainable Management for Maritime Events and Festivals

GALLAGHER, A and PIKE, K., 2011. Sustainable Management for Maritime Events and Festivals. In: Micallef, A. (ed.), MCRR3–2010 Conference Proceedings, Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 61, pp. 158–165. Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy, ISSN 0749–0208.

The number and diversity of events and festivals has grown tremendously over recent years reflecting a societal wish of individuals to partake in a wide range of socio-cultural and sporting activities; with marine and coastal events being no exception. This has lead to a growing recognition of associated environmental impacts, and as such explains the conceptual development of sustainable event management (SEM). Sustainability, though still contested in theory, is the key paradigm in which all resource use and development decisions are taken. This includes relevant authorities, and organizations involved in governance, as well as businesses and commercial enterprises, many of which report on their corporate social and environmental responsibilities. In the UK, this has led to the development of a British Standard for sustainable event management (BS89011:2007).

The organization and management of marine and coastal events and festivals should in theory be no different. One of the ways in which this can be assessed, and sustainable practice be ‘measured’ and ‘monitored’, is by the generation of a number of key indicators, whereby data is gathered to help establish whether environmental and sustainability goals are being met. As such, this research aims to develop and test a robust and useable suite of indicators which can be used by the events management industry to describe their sustainable practice.

The research has three distinct phases. Firstly, views are sought from a broad range of event organisers as to how best achieve sustainability, identifying present practice, intended developments, and organisers’ values. Secondly, data is interpreted using NVIVO in order to establish a core set of indicators that the industry identifies as central to its monitoring of sustainable practice; and thirdly this set will be applied to the Isle of Wight Festival, as an example of a coastal and island event.