The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is a European Union regulation that mandates comprehensive sustainability reporting for companies, including those in the events and festivals sector. Initially targeting large companies with over 250 employees, the CSRD's scope will be expanded to smaller businesses, suppliers, and event organizers, making it a critical consideration for the music and events industry.

During Amsterdam Dance Event last October, the frontrunners of the Green Deal Circular Festivals came together to discuss the implications of CSRD reporting and made the first steps in developing an industry standard for festivals and events. This article outlines the challenges for the events industry and suggests practical steps to support its transition.

Implications for festival organizations

Under the CSRD, festivals and event organizers are required to report detailed information on their environmental and social impacts. This includes data on energy consumption, waste generation, carbon emissions, and social factors such as community engagement and labor conditions. The directive emphasizes a "double materiality" approach, meaning organizations must study, research, and disclose how sustainability issues affect their business and how their operations impact society and the environment.

For the festivals and events industry, this presents both challenges and opportunities. Event organizers face the intimidating task of gathering detailed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data while their core business evolves around creativity and audience engagement. Yet, the CSRD also provides an opportunity to build upon the Green Deal Circular Festival’s model for sustainability to further enhance the industry's impact. Working with such a model to gather and analyse data, enhances the festival’s insight into the most impactful aspect of their organisation and thus where the most work is needed to improve their sustainability. Yet the way in which CSRD compliance is currently structured poses challenges for events:

1. Diverse supply chains: Festivals work with numerous vendors and partners, making data collection complex;
2. Lack of standardization: No universal metrics exist for measuring the environmental and social impacts of events (yet);
3. Capacity constraints: Small and medium-sized events may lack the resources and organizational capacity to implement data collection and reporting mechanisms;
4. Temporarity: The temporary nature of events adds complexity to develop data collection, data analyses, goal setting and reporting processes.

 

To address the challenges of extensive reporting requirements, festivals and event organizers can collaborate to develop an industry standard that simplifies data collection and reporting processes. With the Green Deal Circular Festivals, festivals share best practices, standardize reporting metrics, and collectively work towards reducing their environmental footprint.

 

Opportunities for collaboration

1. Collective impact: By joining forces, festivals and events can extend and amplify their positive influence to suppliers, policy makers, and – of course – their audiences;
2. Shared resources: By developing an industry standard, festivals could reduce the cost of implementing sustainability measures,gathering data and accountant assurance;
3. Unified standards: A common framework simplifies compliance and provides opportunities for the rest of the industry to learn from the frontrunners working on CSRD.

 

Creating an industry standard

As the Green Deal Circular Festivals aims to lead the industry towards sustainable and circular practices, its member organizations joined a round table session during the ADE Green conference at Amsterdam Dance Event to discuss the opportunities and barriers that come with the CSRD. Question asked: How can our GDCF members not only comply with CSRD requirements, but also lead the industry towards more sustainable and efficient practices? The most important outcomes are summarized below, and can help as a guideline increating an industry standard.

 

Important things to take into consideration

1. Collaborate: Establish coalitions among festivals and event organizers to share knowledge and resources. In the Green Deal Circular Festivals more than 50 European music festivals are leading the way. On circularfestivals.com relevant case studies and tools can be found;
2. Standardize: Agree on common sustainability indicators and reporting formats to ensure consistency and comparability. The GDCF Monitor is one of the most used means in the EU in standardizing indicators and metrics;
3. Engage stakeholders: Involve suppliers and brand partners in sustainability initiatives to gather data and create a flexible yet solid process of data exchange;
4. Advocate for policy support: Policymakers have an important role to play in developing supportive regulations and incentives.

 

One thing that stands out: the supply chain, technical backbone, policymakers and accountants should be included in this process as well, ensuring that set goals are realistic, impactful and auditable. More research and discussion on their roles - especially that of governments and policymakers - is highly recommended, and will be initiated by the Green Deal Circular Festivals. In the next paragraphs, we will look into what festivals could do to increase stakeholder engagement and to advocate for policy support.

 

Stakeholder engagement

One of the topics that has been addressed by our GDCF members multiple times, is how to engage suppliers and brand partners. A lot has been written about this, but for the CSRD this might be of even extra importance. In order to comply with the demands of the CSRD, a solid base of mutual understanding and exchange of data has to be defined. As pointed out before, this process must be tailored to fit the specific nature of festival organization and event production.

 

In a previous article, GDCF has explored what it takes to successfully include suppliers and partners in reaching sustainable targets. When finding ways to increase stakeholder engagement in setting an industry standard for CSRD reporting, the following checklist can be seen as a blueprint:

 

1. Team-up with other festivals: create an industry standard and make sure all organizations implement the same ways of working. Collaborate with established groups, such as the Green Deal Circular Festivals;
2. Educate suppliers: Involve suppliers in the process to align on mutual goals, and make sure that both sides understand the benefits of collaborating on CSRD. Engage all stakeholders in writing plans and formulating processes;
3. Find the right contacts: There is a lot of time involved in finding the right counterpart in every organization in the supply chain, but it’s worth the effort. When working with large partners in the supply chain, ask for transparency to align with reporting processes that are already in place.
4. Share learnings: As capacity is limited for most festival organizations, sharing learnings is of high importance.

 

Advocate for policy support

One of the most important things to consider and elaborate upon, is the role of governments and policymakers. How could festivals advocate for supportive policies and financial incentives? From the roundtable discussions on CSRD, the following steps need to be advocated for when liaising with local government and policymakers:

 

1. Clear rules and public recognition: Clear and cohesive regulation can help the industry in developing the right processes and metrics for CSRD reporting. Public recognition is needed to reward progress and to increase engagement throughout the whole supply chain;
2. Financial support: As CSRD is mandatory, policymakers should also take into account the specific nature of festivals and event organizations. Financial support could make a big difference in speeding up industry compliance;

 

Next steps

The goal is to work together on a first version of an industry standard for festivals and events to comply with CSRD reporting requirements. It’s not easy to establish a baseline for sustainability reporting in the events industry that aligns with CSRD requirements ánd takes the specifics of the nature of organizing events into account.

 

With the input of all member organizations, the Green Deal Circular Festivals takes the first steps in creating a practical starting point for festivals and event organizers to navigate CSRD requirements collectively.