Traditionally, ‘environmental impact assessments’ (EIA) are understood as a process or activity usually conducted before moving forward with a plan. You can think of it like a risk assessment, where the risk is focused on the environment: what will the consequences for the environment be? This might be used before building a new building or moving to a new data server, for example. 

There are also other ways that the term environmental impact assessment is used. It can mean the assessment of whether your activity has a positive or negative impact of an activity on the environment. This is how we are approaching environmental impact assessment in the Europeana Impact Playbook. 

Work into understanding Europeana’s broader environmental impact started back in 2018 when a team set the goal to better understand the carbon footprint of Europeana’s digital services. Since then, we have moved forward to also assess the impact of our annual conferences in 2019, 2020 and 2021, whether online or in person. 

Methodologies for calculating environmental impact are beginning to mature. Here we share the approach that we have taken.

The carbon footprint of convening the sector

The environmental impact of Europeana’s digital services

Next steps

• Data collection methods

• Measuring economic impact