ISO 20121 requirements explained: video brief

The shared structure with event-specific content

ISO 20121:2024 is built on the harmonised structure shared by ISO management system standards, clauses 4 to 10, and adds what is specific to events: sustainable development principles and a mission statement, the identification and evaluation of sustainability issues, supply chain management, and a management review of performance against the governing principles of sustainable development. Four informative annexes support it, on planning and implementation, supply chain management, evaluation, and human and child rights. This short film walks through it.

Context asks the organisation to understand the issues that affect its events, climate change among them, and the interested parties to engage; to set the scope of the system; and to define its sustainable development principles and mission statement. In practice that means a scope naming the events and activities covered and principles that guide event decisions.

Issues, suppliers and review

Planning identifies and evaluates the sustainability issues events raise and sets objectives to address them. Operation brings supply chain management into the system, so suppliers and contractors work to the organisation's sustainability requirements. Performance evaluation monitors the system and reviews performance against the governing principles of sustainable development, and improvement acts on what the reviews show, including lessons from each post-event review.

The standard applies to organisers, agencies, venues, exhibition contractors, sports and public bodies and event suppliers of any size. ISO 20121:2024, the second edition, was published in April 2024, and certificates to the 2012 edition follow their issuer's transition date. An independent certification body audits and decides; accreditation for ISO 20121 is offered by some accreditation bodies but not all.

A system can be set up for a single event or for a whole programme of events and services, and venues, caterers and technical suppliers can be certified as well as organisers. The standard allows three routes to show conformity: first-party self-declaration, second-party confirmation by an interested party such as a client, and independent third-party certification. ISO 20121 does not measure an event's carbon footprint by itself; it asks the organisation to consider climate change in its context and evaluate issues such as travel, energy, food and materials, but it is not a reporting framework.