Messeforum is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Today we are also flying the flag in honor of the anniversary of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For us, the most important of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is Goal 13, Climate Action. We truly want to prevent climate change and its effects.
Why have we chosen Climate Action as our most important goal?
Of course, all the goals are important to us. But we believe that we should focus most of our efforts on areas where we can have the greatest and most concrete impact through our activities. We want to concentrate on where our actions can really make a difference for the better.
Everyone in our home country of Finland certainly considers all the SDGs. Peace and justice, gender equality, reducing inequality, eradicating poverty and hunger in the world, water protection etc. are all important.
For us these are very important values, too. They are already automatically built into our value system. However, in practice, we at Messeforum are not able to do very much to change the situation in the world with regard to these goals. On the other hand, combating climate change is something we have concrete and truly effective means to do.
One carbon neutral exhibition stand at a time, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus prevent climate change. Combating climate change is in fact the most important goal for all of humanity. Climate change affects biodiversity as well as people’s living conditions, food security, health and well-being etc. Climate change is not just our concern, but it also affects future generations, our children and grandchildren and their descendants. However, we must respond now, otherwise it will be too late. That is why the goal number 13, Climate action, is our most important goal among the UN’s sustainable development goals.
How do we contribute to combating climate change?
All the exhibition stands we design and build are certified carbon neutral. It means they do not add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The carbon neutrality of our exhibition stands is based on emission calculations of our operations and exhibition stands in accordance with the emission standards. This means we know the exact amount of emissions of our exhibition stands, we can see exactly where the emissions come from, and we can reduce and eliminate them.
On our website about our responsibility, you will find our report on carbon neutral exhibition stands, and our UN Global Compact report. In the reports we describe how we are committed to the UN’s sustainable development goals and how we are working to prevent climate change.
In addition to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we are also committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. 1.5 degrees is the limit above which the effects of climate change on the earth will become critical and cause severe damage to the entire global ecosystem. The earth already has exceeded this limit a couple of times. So it is clear we need to step up our efforts to prevent global warming.