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In this episode of the Convene Podcast, sustainability leader Thiago Araujo makes a compelling case for Latin America’s vital role in the global events industry’s journey to net zero. From carbon offset strategies to rethinking economic and social impact, discover practical steps event professionals can take—wherever they are.
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Music: Inspirational Cinematic Piano with Orchestra
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What is PCMA Convene Podcast?
Since 1986, Convene has been delivering award-winning content that helps event professionals plan and execute innovative and successful events. Join the Convene editors as we dive into the latest topics of interest to — and some flying under the radar of — the business events community.
Convene Podcast Transcript
Convene Interview, ep. 8
*Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies
Thiago Araujo: Latin America. They need to figure out how we're going to win the social argument in sustainability.
Magdalina Atanassova: This is the Convene podcast.
Today's episode takes us to the heart of a conversation that's urgent as it is hopeful.
How can the events industry meaningfully contribute to sustainability,
not just through measurement and certification, but by shifting global impact?
Joining me is Thiago Araujo,
a sustainability leader with more than 15 years of experience at the intersection of environmental strategy, business development and stakeholder engagement.
From driving impact at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to leading sustainability initiatives at the Volvo Group, Thiago now brings his expertise to BCD Meetings & Events and Advito where he champions solutions that are practical, measurable and rooted in global equity.
In this conversation we explore why Latin America is uniquely positioned to be a hub for sustainable events.
How professionals can move from surface level green gestures to systemic change,
and why carbon compensation done right might just be our biggest opportunity yet.
We start now.
Tell our listeners who are not attending Convening LATAM more about the workshop you let there and mostly what do you feel resonated with the audience there?
Thiago Araujo: Okay, so firstly, thank you for having me. It's a really good opportunity to talk about sustainability.
I would say that this was an opportunity to address a very diverse public with very different levels of engagement, knowledge and also needs, which is really important. Some people, they really want to, but they don't,
they don't need it yet.
So this, in this meeting I address very standard talk like we have. We have these seven main approaches. When you look at a client portfolio or an event that would start with how you measure accurately your emissions, your impacts and how you start building your, your roadmap to reduce your emissions.
The second is understanding difference between impact and engagement, which is key here because some people, they spend all the time and resources they have with things that give a lot of visibility.
So more engagement part and they forget to look at the high impact that the real high impact event has. So we have this methodology that we score,
but we value also what has less impact but can really nudge delegates and clients to get involved with the sustainability process.
We have also a whole approach for value certification.
Some people don't pay enough attention on that. So we have very robust, robust certifications that if you are targeting the right venues, the right hotels,
big part of your work is already done. So we work a lot on that.
I had a recommendation for red meat ban or reduction, but I think should be banned. It's like no smoking thing that because red meats Huge impact for climate change in terms of deforestation, but also getting greenhouse gas emissions and all the supply chain.
So this should be something that humankind needs to resolve quickly.
And the last three is piloting. Start testing things with client. That's my, my first recommendation to any new in this subject. Find some 1, 2, 3 things to test,
give feedback to your client. They get used to and then you start building from that and compensating so you have your unavoidable emissions. Once you understand emissions, you reduce it.
You need to compensate. This is a whole podcast conversation when I'm really passionate about.
But we need to compensate. We need to understand that we have an impact.
We have ways to reduce this impact by investing in nature based projects and we strongly recommend this to our clients. And last but not least, teaming up. We need to work together.
This is not sustainability is not one person solution, it's not one company solution.
And in the events industry this wouldn't be different. We need to work together to find all these solutions. But I think what was really intriguing for the delegates during the event was when I said that I'm convinced, and I really am, that Latin America has a central role to play in achieving plainly sustainability for the vet industry.
And I made my case. I explained about the social impact we can have and it need to have and also all the natural resources we need to protect,
the clean energy we have already in place and some mechanisms that the world should be copying or at least been inspired by.
And I think that really touched the heart of the delegates because I had dozens of people coming off the event and asking why I believe that and if I was convinced that we could be a poll for sustainable events and I do believe, yes, I think Latin America has a key role to play.
Magdalina Atanassova: You want to expand on it a little more. I was planning to do that in a later stage, but I think it's a good moment now.
How can Latin America really use their unique situation and also maybe compare it to the other regions, Europe,
APAC, North America.
Thiago Araujo: Sure,
let's have a universal approach, right? You are a major transnational company, you are in several countries and you want to be sustainable in your meetings and events.
If you target the richest economies in the world,
of course, in terms of certification for buildings and processes and reporting, they will be in advance.
And you could say by doing this in Switzerland or in Belgium, I've been sustainable because the higher concentration of companies, the big companies, they also will be in these territories.
But here is just one aspect of the whole thing,
because if you are just concentrating more events in rich economies,
which makes sense. Sometimes it's cheaper to do that.
What is your real social impact?
So that I think would be the first conversation we need to know as a region in Latin America is how we measure.
How can we have a sort of a mechanism that we assure that investing in this industry, attracting more international events.
Maybe you're going to have a stronger emission by making people fly to Latin America, but you are enabling these countries because you have the other two aspects, the social and the economic part.
The economic part is you are bringing income, you are investing these regions. And prosperity for this country also means they might not need to do as much deforestation and pressure on natural resources.
So these countries, they need money.
Like I mentioned one for me, one of my favorite policies is from Costa Rica, they pay you for not cutting the forest,
for keeping the forest attached,
but for this you need money. This conversation is really clear in the international community.
Like the North,
I don't want to north and south conversation. But the rich countries, they need to finance the industrial for clean revolution for the developing countries. Because if we want the same standards.
I live in France and I see the difference. Of course, if all more than 200 million Brazilians, that's my country,
they decide to have the same level of comfort and consumption than France. And I'm not even missing the United States. We're not going to have a nature biodiversity anymore.
And climate change won't be a challenge anymore be a reality for everyone. I mean the two degrees that we really don't want to cross the line. So why I'm going that far is because Latin America, if you take some strategic information one clean energy, we have clean grid for many countries like Brazil is more than 80%.
We had recently had a politician from the U.S. i don't want to name him,
but he said you should use your hydropower to power AI.
Yeah,
we power all these things too. But yes.
So some industries, they need to clean their production. What they're going to do instead of going to China, where you still have mainly coal plants, they might go to Costa Rica or Brazil or Colombia that has 65% clean energy.
Because they know they are buying clean energy from the source and they have cheaper labor. And when the companies they do this, they invest in these countries for industry is a bit the same.
It's the approach is coming to Latin America what the impact of your event is.
And globally it's very easy to say emissions, CO2 equivalent emissions, greenhouse gas emissions. Okay,
but that's not the whole thing.
So let's say your emissions a bit higher going to Latin America, but you have three times, four times, ten times bigger impact on positive impact on social might make sense.
That's our challenge today. And we are not in position to make that claim because we are not doing the right math. We are not looking at the numbers. So if we have this, if we attract all this business,
how are we going to convert this in social progress? And then you can go to these companies and say you need to bring eventually in America.
That's a bit my point here.
And of course, as I said, by progressing and bringing income,
these countries are in better position to protect their natural resources. And it's a universal interest how the countries do this today.
Magdalina Atanassova: I like the fact that you make it more international and global in scope in terms of the rich economies need to be mindful and protect and invest in countries that maybe considered lower economies,
but to protect what's ours in terms of we're global citizens. So this nature is all ours, we all need it to be good.
And this brings me to,
to this idea of net zero goals. You know, there's so many companies that have put those 2030, 2015 as your goals. And I feel that in the industry. We’re a bit like, okay, we have signed up some something somewhere to kind of support that idea. But how can we practically contribute to those goals? What can event planners really do to make this a reality?
Thiago Araujo: All right,
I always bring this, the two sides of the coin. One is from the event planner looking at his event and the other is for the industry because it's very different conversation.
The commitment is net zero by 2050.
Okay, so net zero means that we limit our emissions to the capacity of the planet to absorb.
Okay, so this is not easy math, it's not easy calculation to do. But more than 93% of GDP before the withdrawal from the United States were committed to cut the emissions to keep the 1.5 degrees global warming.
And at the same time we had companies, they were under the SBTI, the Science Based Target Initiative,
committing with the same.
So what he said is we're going to play the game. We're going to cut our emissions and be compliant with the science based targets.
That's the whole thing. An engagement from the COP21 in 2015,
which I see that's the biggest achievement of humankind if we deliver it.
So when you look at these companies, before I joined BCD M&E I worked at Volvo Group.
And you know, they make trucks, boats,
construction equipments,
whatever so what for this company is a challenge.
Transform the chain,
the supply chain, the production, the methods and everything else.
And we don't look at meetings and events and even business travel as a challenge because you control it. You decide if you do. If you need to cut, you cut.
People survived Covid so they understand if they don't have a cleaner steel or cleaner resources, they cannot control their supply chain. That's where that company might perish.
So this is where people are spending. Their energy will be the same for every product industry.
If it's pharmaceuticals or they are figuring out how they're going to make the production cleaner,
others in service they want, they have less problem. Their challenges Office data center travel so this is a more straightforward conversation and in this context what I would say is they are not yet paying attention.
But they will,
because when you look at 2030, this number is not here by accident.
2030 is an intermediate milestone, is when we're going to reassess. We are going to look at what we achieved from 15 to 30 and what we have to do to be net zero by 2050.
So what's going to happen is companies in 2030, they're going to look at the whole emissions and the whole thing they did. They will say, oh God, I need to find more.
An extra 15% now.
Oh, let's look at travel, meetings and events and others of course.
But then we've been ignored for a couple of few years,
but our time will come.
So this is I would say for the industry. We need to prepare for the companies that will start looking at all the emissions and probably missions and events. We get into radar for the planner or the project manager.
What I would suggest is take these bonus time for some companies are really already engaged and they are having a hard time. But take this time to get familiar with solutions and tools.
Learn about the global challenges your client challenges. One of our major clients is a pharmaceutical company.
They were really excited to start piloting in different regions but then the sustainability team said not yet because we are dealing with have bigger fish to fry.
So I would say it's not going to be uncommon.
The challenge is collective. It's our challenge as a species, as humankind. But your client needs to spend somewhere else now. But they will come to you and use this precious time to learn to skill up to have to be capable of engaging in this conversation.
I give a very simple example. This is not going to be rare for event planner how many times you receive a briefing with the destination already selected.
That has nothing to do with the logistics of the delegates because of our political re motivation because of a sponsor, because. And when you look at that could be like 300% more emissions or 400% for more emissions.
This is the kind of a simple thing that we have been doing this forever.
Like this is the, this used to be the status quo that we could start challenging our clients.
And I see this more and more and I see results and that's what's exciting. People are changing the way they approach certain decisions using of course fact based decisions.
Magdalina Atanassova: I feel our audience won't be very excited to hear yet another crisis coming their way after everything they dealt with and are currently dealing with because of all the disruptions that the new U.S.
administration is bringing to the global economy.
Where do you think the power lies when it comes to sustainability?
The companies,
In our case in the events industry, the attendees, the stakeholders who has the most power to bring change.
Thiago Araujo: Events are very different. I think if you have a conference of parts a cop attendees are head of states or highest level you can have in government. So the attendees, they have their,
the words say if it's for a regular delegates definitely is the client who is producing it or the owner of the event could be. I don't know, you're an SVP or a communication director.
But what I would say is it will be sort of social contract. We're going to agree that some things we don't do anymore and it takes time.
Of course we started with a small portion of,
of society and these evolves like everything else. But when you look at events I see people way more concerned about avoiding certain types of waste that in a couple, a couple of years ago would be seen as abundance like food.
You know, today we, we are getting there where we start really fine tuning and measuring how many people can you confirm you'll be there for the dinner. And this is, you know,
you could have like all right, this is, this is not, this is not for us, it's not a limitation but this is being replaced by.
We care about this and people they, they accept it. So I think you know it's is a two way conversation. Delegates in the owner of the event and of course the team they're producing.
But you know I think we move forward together. That's why it's really important for the event producer to communicate the measures they have, the actions they take taken and the impact of these actions.
Because we're going to normalize this kind of things.
Like you know,
who would imagine 10 years ago that a hotel Would ask you to not leave your towel on the floor because you can use it again.
Simple things that water pressure is important, is important indicator the use of water and how it is treated. So this kind of simple things that just become normal. And it would be the same for taking a business class, a long haul trip for one day meeting people will start being less inclined to do this because they will be more conscious about the impacts of this trip.
Magdalina Atanassova: Do you feel we are moving very slowly into adapting and normalizing these behaviors? Because I.
I don't know. The last time I checked about the 1.2 degrees, we were not really doing very well in terms of meeting the target.
Thiago Araujo: No, you're not.
Magdalina Atanassova: We saw some positive changes during COVID We were all very hopeful they would stick,
but they didn't really. If we have to be honest with ourselves, we were rushing back to the planes and our usual behaviors.
So what do you think? How can we make people buy into those changes and those measures new behaviors a bit quicker?
Thiago Araujo: Yeah. Our existence depends on this answer.
Magdalina Atanassova: Do you have the answer?
Thiago Araujo: No. We try.
I've been in this world for a long time and I talk to specialists that they're really engaged for decades. And the thing is we have different cultures, we have different ambitions.
We have some people, they were elected. Running by really nature is not important. The importance is wealth and money. And if you still have this kind of superpowers running on this sort of platform make harder people to just say, oh, I'm conscious about my 1 ton extra emission during the year or that extra flight that I should avoid.
What I think that the hope is,
of course, once again, this is not a whole country.
This is a group, a group that was influenced by certain promises. And I think most of those who chose it's really believing that they need a better quality of life.
But I think, I think we, we need to have a more universal view.
Because if I stay, I start saying me first. And it's not really believing that be first. And everybody thinks like that there is no, no common standards and agreements. That that's important for me.
That's why I think, I really believe that a strong international community is the only way to get kind of commitment. That's why the Paris agreement was so exciting because it's a binding commitment and that would shake things.
But when you look at these emissions not really going down as we would expect to limit to 1.5, not 1.2, but we hit 1.5 a couple of times already.
We've been having the hottest year the hottest month, the hottest day and you have record after record and we see cities that now is on the water like they've never been, like Sao Paulo or southern Brazil or Bangladesh, that you have all these floods and then suddenly they're not going to have rivers anymore.
So that when you see all these unexpected,
clear extreme weather events out of control,
I think people will more and more get on board. Not because they believe, because they witnessed. And this will change. Unfortunately,
I think we were not smart enough, not quick enough to understand the message and the science and say let's act in advance. But you know, we are like this for everything.
People keep smoking, people keep eating poorly, avoiding doing the sports,
we keep taking risks. Right. I think most of us, we do believe that we are,
you know, in the deep of our minds, we believe we are sort of immortals so we don't act instantly.
So what I think is sustainability will not be a collective decision and we reach the tipping point and now everybody is acting. I think we're going to have stronger and stronger legislation.
Even if we have this, you know, this testing like you see in Europe now with the CSRD or was expecting,
expected to have a review because it was really robust. When we saw the CSRD we said wow. And the CS3D also these two. I will say this is incredible but now they want to simplify that it's still positive outcome here.
Some people have, yeah, see sustainability is that. No, it's not. It's just they're going to adjust, they're going to make it smoothly for the companies to adapt. They don't want to crash the economy, don't want to kill the companies.
This is not sustainable. So I see this coming and going. I see this, these legislations evolving. I don't know if you saw but China is copying and pasting the CSRD, doing their own thing.
They've picked already emissions a bit later than everybody else, but earlier than they planned. So when you see all these indicators we can say like, you know,
first we don't have an option and second, people are doing things, people are delivering solution, they are engaged and we just need to have more and more.
I still optimistic.
Magdalina Atanassova: We're not operating in a vacuum, right? We are not just doing our own thing. We're dependent on so many geopolitical movements and changes and they are kind of forced onto us.
So I believe it's important to have these larger conversations and speaking of larger conversations,
what trends or development in sustainability you would think or you would kind of point event professionals towards especially when we speak of Latin America, but also for, you know,
the general public.
Thiago Araujo: Yeah.
A couple of years ago,
the trend or in innovation because event is really experience.
People want to test and feel and see.
So most of the conversation was around this.
How can I innovate in my event? And people feel that I am engaged with sustainability.
I think we are putting this a little bit aside and we are taking this serious conversation. So first is how can I effectively measure impact?
And impact comes from CO2, from air travel, but also from food waste, from the energy purchased by the venue,
by the wastes that I avoid from my suppliers. And I think this, this knowledge is gained more and more ground.
It's not a new conversation. Professionals, many, not most of them are already familiar with that.
So when I say this is the trend that you should pay attention is the trend is the pressure will probably increase the next three, five years because the big commitments were 2015 and closer.
We got to 2030 more.
Okay, now what is the plan B and C and D?
And I think that's the thing we need to prepare. The trend now is prepare for pressure.
Get familiar with measurement tools. We have today cheap and easy to deploy tools for measuring events, emissions, whole scope. Basically we work with a new supplier called climate is a new partner,
is incredible carbon calculator, really use, really easy to use,
is a software service and you have all the indicators,
suggestions how you can improve for your next event. You can create different scenarios and compare these scenarios with the data visualization. So this is the kind of things that five years ago, 10 years ago was expensive or not accessible or not tested and you had to pay an external,
a supplier to do this for you.
So today you have very easy accessible technologies. And I think this is the trend is you should try to be autonomous. You should understand the pressure is going to increase.
You need to be prepared to engage in this kind of conversations.
You can't sit in front of a client, just take notes anymore.
If your client say what is commitment with net zero? And then that need to cut emissions by half,
you can't just take notes and say, yes, of course, I think it's important you understand what he's trying to connect with you and they tell you this.
So for me, the trend now is measure more and more accurately because you're going to need to cut more.
Magdalina Atanassova: What's your one piece of advice for event professionals in Latin America who want to demonstrate their sustainability leaders, even if they're just getting started.
Thiago Araujo: It's going to sound like a bit fortune cookie message, but What I would say to a new one, okay,
this is specifically for those really sad. I would say to avoid what is shining and try to seek the truth.
Because we are bombarded by all these bad news on TV and they are important.
Good journalism is important. We need transparency. But in general media, they need this constant breaking news. You know, if you have a conference, you're never going to say everything went as expected.
We are on the track slowly, but we keep moving. Don't say that. I know they're frustrated. Every single major conference, another frustration, another.
And so what I would say I tell these people is do not be seduced by buying this. You know what, the easy comprehension of the subject. Take several steps back and try to understand the timeline and what has been evolving.
Why some stuff. Don't, don't pass.
Read the bills. Don't read the easy things. Read the bills. They're going to be voted. Understand, read your client's ESG reports.
Understand the whole picture that I think the best way for you to really have,
to really understand why you can have a good impact.
Magdalina Atanassova: I like that message Wrapping up. Was there anything we didn't mention? We should.
Thiago Araujo: Just to summarize the conversation.
I think once again, Latin America, we have really the environmental assets with the needs for social progress.
And that would be the strongest argument to include the economic progress that we need dearly. And all this combined, I think this is, this would be the best way. We didn't talk about a couple of major challenges, but that I think is part of the number seven that I mentioned,
the team up,
like how to have sustainable suppliers. This is not a project manager challenge. They can, they can ask, they can try. They don't have the time to audit. They don't have the tools and the means to verify the if what they hear from the supplier is good enough.
This is an industry challenge. You know, you need local government, we need agencies. We need the big players from the industry together and say, okay, let's have a sustainability database for suppliers like Berlin.
They have it. If you're producing an event in Berlin, the city of Berlin can help you to find sustainable suppliers. These the kind of things that we need time.
But when it comes to these major instruments,
we can't do this by ourselves. It's not one agency, it's not one hotel chain.
They need to gather competitors need to gather all the industry behind that. The same for the social, the social mechanism to understand where the impacts are.
GDP is not enough.
We generated this percentage of GDP by doing, by attracting events to do Our country, that's not enough. You're going to need to see really where the money goes and how we have these indicators and how companies report how I reinvest in society.
And it's not just giving food or giving clothes though these philanthropic things are nice.
But that's not how we're going to solve the problem. It's how you really reinvest in local community. And it's by training, is by infrastructure, is by, I don't know,
this is something that Latin America, they need to figure out how we're going to win the social argument in sustainability.
And that's it? That's it. We mentioned about the challenges. I think we have several types of tools. I think people, they need to really pay attention on the major indicators, the major laws that have been negotiated,
the signs the clients give. It's not because the client cut budget this year that they are giving up on the sustainability.
We need to really keep calm, no panic and look how things are evolving.
Pushbacks always will exist. This is a multi decade challenge and we need to run the marathon, the ultra marathon. So don't get tired with the first kilometers.
Magdalina Atanassova: I want to wrap up though on a positive side. So where's the opportunity in all this?
Thiago Araujo: You think, okay,
I have one that I'm really passionate about. I've been really advocating for compensation and offsetting. Okay,
what is this?
First you measure, you reduce your emission, but you still have unavoidable emissions and everybody has human activity, right?
But when you have the economic power,
you purchase carbon credits to compensate that emission that you couldn't avoid.
For a long time this was seen as corruption,
greenwashing and we could, of course we could debate that.
Part of this is true, but also part of this is lobbying and people who do not want to take the responsibility for paying for their emissions.
And for me this is something that is not really getting track. Now we have already the carbon market for a while, but now we start having this notion, this conscious that just cutting the emissions won't suffice.
We need to increase the planet's capacity to absorb the CO2 from the atmosphere, right?
And the best way to do that is by investing in a base is nature based solutions. So let's say I have my event,
I couldn't avoid 100 tones of CO2 and 101 tone. If you can, you can mitigate, you can compensate with it.
25, 30, $40. So let's say I pay $40 per turn, $4,000 at the end of my event.
This money goes to a project of regeneration,
meaning reforestation or restoration of wetland.
And why I'm so excited about this is because today we can better control these projects and avoid being scammed. The second is the word has degraded land as large as the surface of the United States.
So if you take all these land that could just be restored is as large as the U.S. and if we do this properly,
40% of all the emissions we have to reduce could be absorbed by investing in restoration.
40%.
That's why I'm such a strong believer, because reforestation,
restoring wetlands, this is low tech,
cheap.
We manage this, it's reliable,
it's abundant. We know how to do.
It's just we need to start doing this more and more committed and anyone can support.
So if we want to wrap up with a positive thing that for me beside the social part, is where this industry will look at the global population, the global community, and say my industry is responsible and is net zero.
We reduce the emissions as we should and we compensate what we have to and we generate social progress and we generate progress for industry and we generate innovation. That's my positive message.
I believe we can do.
And you just have to have more and more true believers engaged and pushing the agenda.
Magdalina Atanassova: That's a wonderful wrap to our conversation.
Thiago Araujo: Thiago, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and being on the podcast. It's my pleasure.
Thiago Araujo: Thank you. Whenever you need.
Magdalina Atanassova: Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.