Taking Leadership on the Impact of Sport on the Environment

Several million of us watched the Beijing Olympics in August. A few weeks before the opening ceremonies, there was a minor media frenzy on whether the pollution and the smog in the air over Beijing would require event delays, and in some cases, cancellations of events. A few members of the U.S. cycling team arrived in Beijing conspicuously attired, not only in their sponsors' apparel, but with protective masks. They feared the bad and polluted air would harm their chances of medalling as well as their health.  And then the Olympics ceremonies began, the air cleared after a few days of rain, and the media turned instead to the spectacle and the drama that the Olympics always is.

Even so, the impact of sport on the environment as well as sustainability and global warming, are issues, and especially sports ethics dilemmas, that all the spectacle and drama of Olympics cannot erase.

There are many athletes today who are passionate about the environment. Coaches urge their athletes to get involved as team members in a range of community projects, among them those with an environmental mission. 

Yet, when it comes to thinking about the impact of playing and watching sport on the environment, coaches and athletes often forget or fail to make connections. For example, do our soccer coaches know that, according to a report delivered at the UN Conference on Sport and the Environment in 2005, that the emissions estimate predicted for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany was 250,000 tons of greenhouse gases on top of what normally would have been generated, had the event not been held there?

This is just one example. So, the next time coaches think about ways to bring their teams together by contributing to the community, consider the impact of your own sport, and the footprint it makes on the environment. 

At TASL, we hope to continue our conversation with coaches about the impact of sport on the environment and what we can do to help benefit our athletes and the earth.