Net Zero Direction

Local examples, global problems

Summing up

“It is easier to take care of what we consider important if we understand its value.” Ludovica Montecchio’s article Music for environmental protection ends with this sentence, reminding us that awareness is the first step towards change and art can become a vehicle for emotions to trigger the feeling of caring.

The Play cultural association and the Sentieri Sonori project – sister initiatives of the No Borders and Suoni delle Dolomiti festivals – unite trekking, nature and music and highlight how sustainability stems from enhancing one’s territory.

However, it could be argued that, like all human activities, even artistic ones, despite being aimed at raising public awareness on issues concerning the protection of a territory, still generate a more or less marked environmental impact – whether we are talking about a festival harvested in the Euganean Hills or the much better known and discussed case of the Jova Beach Party.

In search of solutions – the role of certification

The question that is often asked in any sphere, not only the arts, is: how can we move towards a choice that is as informed and conscious as possible?

This is where certifications come into play – among the best known, Eco Label and LCA – whose task is to inform consumers in a transparent manner about the environmental impact of the reality they are trusting: the parameters, data, maximum and minimum thresholds of emissions and other variables refer to international laws and directives – European Union and United Nations – aimed at protecting human and environmental health.

Responsibility, therefore, is not entirely shifted onto the consumer, but also and above all onto the companies offering the service.

This objectivity should also help to understand which realities are really working in the interest of the environment and not just for profit, falling into greenwashing (façade environmentalism), a communication strategy that leads potential customers to believe that the reality they are referring to is more involved in environmental protection than it actually is.

In short, it is not enough to roll out a green carpet at events and flood a room with pots of flowers to be able to call an event green. The certification comes as a desire to make clear who is actively engaged in their concrete actions to reduce their environmental impact – for example towards net zero which implies, in the words of the European Institute on Economics and the Environment, “a reduction in net emissions by reducing energy demand, de-carbonising the energy system and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

Local projects

Among the cultural activities in the area involved in offsetting projects is the aforementioned Sentieri Sonori: during the course of the festival’s events, CO2 emissions are calculated and then offset with reforestation and conservation projects in existing forests, bringing the net emissions from that event to zero.

On a local level, this is an example of how carbon neutral activities can be implemented, which calculate and offset carbon emissions with offsetting projects.

These types of activities have proven to work on a local level, but can the same be said on a larger scale? Questions about carbon offsetting strategies and other systems such as eco-taxes (a set of taxes applied to activities and products with a negative impact on the environment, the proceeds of which have the potential to be invested in activities with a positive impact), e.g. the carbon tax, remain many – references such as the adoption of the European CBAM and the recent investigation by Internazionale into the cheating by companies involved in offsetting projects.

Critical issues

The real challenge is to achieve emission-free events from the start. Carbon neutrality and CO2 offsetting presuppose an ex post intervention of vegetation to compensate for the emissions produced by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: the activity was not carbon neutral from the beginning.

It makes no sense to think that we can solve the problem of CO2 emissions from our large-scale actions by simply planting new trees while maintaining the same lifestyles and energy consumption patterns.

Certainly changing people’s mindsets and lifestyles is a process that alone takes too long compared to the climate emergency. While new technologies are being developed to help our lifestyles achieve true climate neutrality – Europe’s net-zero goal for 2050 – solutions such as offsetting and certification remain simply an alternative during the energy transition, certainly not the solution.