Is sport a vic­tim of cli­mate change and/or a con­trib­u­tor to­wards it?

Think about that ques­tion for a mo­ment…

Sport is ac­tu­al­ly both a vic­tim of cli­mate change and a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. Sport is a vic­tim be­cause of the neg­a­tive im­pact of cli­mate change on sport and a vic­timiser be­cause of the large car­bon foot­print gen­er­at­ed from sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties across the globe.

As a for­mer West In­dies crick­et cap­tain and as an ad­min­is­tra­tor with­in the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sport, I feel a deep sense of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cham­pi­on the aware­ness of this is­sue and to co­erce much-need­ed adap­tive changes. Through the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Fac­ul­ty of Sport, with sup­port from the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and a few oth­er part­ners, I was for­tu­nate to be in­volved in a re­search project cen­tred on this very per­ti­nent top­ic. My in­volve­ment has opened my eyes to the point, so much so that I am now com­pelled to act.

There are a great num­ber of phe­nom­e­na as­so­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change that are al­ready im­pact­ing the sport­ing land­scape in a ma­te­r­i­al way, such as ex­treme weath­er con­di­tions and a host of re­lat­ed is­sues. Heat­waves, wild­fires, poor air qual­i­ty, cy­clones, the loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty, droughts, ris­ing sea lev­els, ex­ces­sive rain­fall and en­hanced dis­ease risks are some of the phe­nom­e­na as­so­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change. These are quite dis­rup­tive el­e­ments that have been in­ten­si­fy­ing and will soon oblit­er­ate sport at all lev­els—the in­dus­try lev­el and the in­sti­tu­tion­al and in­di­vid­ual lev­els.

Rest as­sured, sport faces an ex­is­ten­tial threat. We must act now.

But, how should we act to ad­dress this burn­ing is­sue? I have de­vel­oped fif­teen (15) rec­om­men­da­tions for our con­sid­er­a­tion:

1. There is need for gov­ern­ing bod­ies in sport to launch and im­ple­ment en­vi­ron­men­tal strate­gies that will fa­cil­i­tate the achieve­ment of a car­bon-neu­tral goal. There is al­so a need to set tar­gets and to aim for in­cre­men­tal re­duc­tions in the size of the car­bon foot­print re­lat­ed to our sport. World Ath­let­ics and World Sail­ing have al­ready ac­tioned this type of adap­tive ap­proach.

2. Adopt mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures across the sport­ing lev­els im­me­di­ate­ly. These in­clude but are not lim­it­ed to a pos­i­tive man­age­ment of sup­ply chains and the man­u­fac­tur­ing of items re­lat­ed to sport. Im­ple­ment a man­age­ment sys­tem that in­sists that man­u­fac­tur­ing stan­dards in­cor­po­rate more sus­tain­able ma­te­ri­als and pro­mote short­er en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly sup­ply chains.

3. Col­lab­o­rate with part­ners in sport and use Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) and me­dia plat­forms to com­mu­ni­cate pow­er­ful mes­sages on Cli­mate Ac­tions to en­hance ed­u­ca­tion on en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and the use of sport CSR in­vest­ment to bet­ter achieve the goal of car­bon neu­tral­i­ty.

4. The man­age­ment, de­sign and re-de­sign of sport­ing in­fra­struc­ture should be green and cli­mate-friend­ly. Adopt change man­age­ment prin­ci­ples to­wards the man­age­ment of sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties to ide­al­ly re­duce car­bon emis­sions. Use ze­ro car­bon build­ing stan­dards, pro­mote ef­fi­cien­cy and re­silience for both new and retro­fit­ted build­ings.

5. Up­scale re­cy­cling and our at­ti­tude to re­cy­cling.

6. Im­ple­ment and/or en­hance Green Waste Man­age­ment.

7. Im­ple­ment and en­hance wa­ter har­vest­ing.

8. Use re­new­able en­er­gy sources.

9. De­car­bonise trans­port, even if we have to of­fer con­ces­sions or in­cen­tives for same.

10. Work to­wards a shared un­der­stand­ing on cli­mate change and cre­ate cli­mate-change-themed sport chal­lenges be­tween and among part­ners.

11. De­vel­op a gov­ern­ing frame­work to pro­tect our land and our oceans.

12. Main­stream cli­mate change con­sid­er­a­tions by in­tro­duc­ing cli­mate change con­cepts in­to all as­pects of life.

13. Part­ner with aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions to sup­port and pro­mote cli­mate change and sport sus­tain­abil­i­ty pro­gram­ming.

14. Sup­port and spon­sor re­search and schol­ar­ship in cli­mate change and sport sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

15. Be a cham­pi­on for out­reach and ad­vo­ca­cy in the are­na of cli­mate change.

These mea­sures must be­come a way of life for all of us. For now, take a bold step and join us at the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sport to get more deeply in­volved in our ur­gent cli­mate ac­tion agen­da.