By Grace Chua
Reporter
caiwj@sph.com.sg

 

AT every environment conference I attend, someone invariably makes a snide comment about how nippy the air-conditioning is.

It’s a cheap shot, but they’re usually right. After all, these are conferences about saving energy, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and rescuing the earth.

The same sort of cheap shot was made at this weekend’s National Sustainability Conference, organised by the National University of Singapore.

Frankly, though, this conference was better than most.

Not a plastic bottle in sight, food waste was composted in the NUS kitchens and the conference programme was not only double-sided, but half-sized to save paper. The meeting even claimed to be the first carbon-neutral conference held in Singapore.

This was a step up from other conferences I’ve attended, where plastic bottles (ok, of Newater) were handed out like...water, programme notes were on fat single-sided sheets and every participant was given his or her very own styrofoam box of delicious, well-travelled (in food miles) lunch.

And each year, policymakers and climate-change negotiators are derided for holding their United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in places as far-flung as Bonn and Bali.

How many thousands of air miles do these administrators travel, detractors cry, and how much CO2 do they emit in the process? How much paper do they use? How many trees?

I’m going to propose a double-barrelled solution.

First, I think conference organisers should at least be conscious of the environmental costs and take the sort of steps that the National Sustainability Conference took to reduce waste and emissions.

And second, let’s look at a conference in a whole new light.

Never mind its environmental footprint (though this should be as small as possible), what is its final outcome?

How much real progress is made as a result of a conference, compared to its environmental impact?

With all the air miles and food miles and plastic waste and trees felled, the academics, administrators and policymakers (and the journalists) should have some real changes to show for it.

The bigger the environmental footprint, the bigger the policy change I’m going to expect.

That’s what I call bang for my buck.