The 2023 UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence of Par­ties [COP28] in Dubai from No­vem­ber 30 - De­cem­ber 12 is fo­cus­ing on four sig­nif­i­cant points out­lined by COP28 pres­i­dent UAE's Dr Sul­tan Ahmed Al Jaber.

They are: Fast-track­ing the en­er­gy tran­si­tion and slash­ing emis­sions be­fore 2030; Trans­form­ing cli­mate fi­nance by de­liv­er­ing on old promis­es and set­ting the frame­work for a new deal on fi­nance; - Putting na­ture, peo­ple, lives and liveli­hoods at the heart of cli­mate ac­tion; and Mo­bil­is­ing for the most in­clu­sive COP ever.

Cli­mate change im­pacts the sports in­dus­try and the sports in­dus­try has al­so con­tributed to cli­mate change. COP28 must pro­vide an up­date on the Sports for Cli­mate Ac­tion Frame­work [2016] em­a­nat­ing from the Paris Agree­ment 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to the UN Sports for Cli­mate Ac­tion Frame­work [2016], sports or­gan­i­sa­tions must take "re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their cli­mate foot­print, help­ing glob­al am­bi­tion step-up and in­cen­tivis­ing ac­tion be­yond sports to take mean­ing­ful and trans­for­ma­tive cli­mate ac­tion."

Ac­cord­ing to the Frame­work, "Sport's im­pact on our cli­mate is com­plex and can be dif­fi­cult to mea­sure de­pend­ing on the size of the or­gan­i­sa­tion and/or event. How­ev­er, most sports or­gan­i­sa­tions and fans would now ac­knowl­edge that Sport's con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change – through as­so­ci­at­ed trav­el, en­er­gy use, con­struc­tion, cater­ing and so on – is con­sid­er­able. More­over, sports' glob­al in­ter­est for bil­lions of fans and the me­dia cov­er­age gen­er­at­ed in re­sponse pro­vide a strong plat­form for the sport sec­tor to play an ex­em­plary role in meet­ing the chal­lenge of cli­mate change, and in­spire and en­gage large au­di­ences to do the same."

The Re­port stat­ed that cli­mate change im­pacts on glob­al sports in sev­er­al ways: (a) Dam­age to play­ing sur­faces due to ex­treme tem­per­a­tures, ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of drought, flood­ing, and/or pest species ex­tend­ing their nat­ur­al range; (b) Dam­age to build­ings and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture due to vi­o­lent storms; (c) Coastal ero­sion and sea lev­el rise di­rect­ly af­fect­ing sport prop­er­ties in sea­side ar­eas; (d) Warmer win­ters and lack of nat­ur­al snow threat­en­ing ski re­sorts at low­er al­ti­tudes; (e) Un­sea­son­al rain­fall forc­ing can­cel­la­tion or aban­don­ment of sport match­es; (f) Heat waves forc­ing changes to tim­ing of sport events; (g) In­creased in­juries to play­ers from heat ex­haus­tion and im­pact in­juries from hard­er play­ing sur­faces; (h) More po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful al­gal blooms lim­it­ing di­rect con­tact out­door wa­ter sports; (i) Sub-stan­dard fan ex­pe­ri­ence where high tem­per­a­tures cre­ate po­ten­tial health risks and de­tract from the en­joy­ment of the event; (j) Cli­mate adap­tion mea­sures be­ing re­quired in the de­sign of new or re­fur­bished sport venues; The Sports for Cli­mat­ic Ac­tion Ini­tia­tive par­tic­i­pants high­light­ed five prin­ci­ples where sports can play a role in ad­dress­ing cli­mate change.

Prin­ci­ple 1: Un­der­take sys­tem­at­ic ef­forts to pro­mote greater en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty- sports or­gan­i­sa­tions should utilise good prac­tices for "pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty strate­gies and im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to re­duc­ing their cli­mate im­pact."

Prin­ci­ple 2: Re­duce over­all cli­mate im­pact- all sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions must act to re­duce its ef­fects. For this to be done, or­gan­i­sa­tions must gath­er ro­bust quan­ti­ta­tive da­ta on their ac­tiv­i­ty's cli­mate foot­print through Green­house gas emis­sions [GHG]. Once the cli­mat­ic im­pact of its ac­tiv­i­ties is un­der­stood, sports or­gan­i­sa­tions must avoid or re­duce, sub­sti­tute/re­place, or com­pen­sate and re­port as part of their mit­i­gat­ing mea­sures.

Prin­ci­ple 3: Ed­u­cate for cli­mate ac­tion- a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple in ad­dress­ing the im­pact on the cli­mate is through strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tion where sports or­gan­i­sa­tions are made aware of cli­mate change is­sues and how they can con­tribute to ad­dress­ing them through in­formed strate­gies.

Prin­ci­ple 4: Pro­mote sus­tain­able and re­spon­si­ble con­sump­tion- "This prin­ci­ple aims to en­cour­age sports or­ga­ni­za­tions and event’s or­ga­niz­ers to adopt sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment poli­cies to mo­ti­vate providers to de­vel­op clean­er op­tions. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paigns to­ward fans and oth­er stake­hold­ers could be built to pro­mote green­er, sus­tain­able op­tions."

Prin­ci­ple 5: Ad­vo­cate for cli­mate ac­tion through com­mu­ni­ca­tion- "The ob­jec­tive of this prin­ci­ple refers to con­sis­tent­ly pro­mote aware­ness about cli­mate change by mo­bil­is­ing re­sources to sup­port ac­tion on cli­mate change, such as: (a) Broad­cast­ing chan­nels; (b) so­cial me­dia; (c) Ath­letes as role mod­els and cli­mate am­bas­sadors; (d) Show­cas­ing sus­tain­able ac­tions at events, at club grounds and at icon­ic venues; (e) As­so­ci­a­tion/fed­er­a­tion net­works; (f) Sport clubs' mem­ber­ships and team fans."

The ef­fects of cli­mate change have al­ready be­gun to chal­lenge sports ad­min­is­tra­tors as rules and reg­u­la­tions have been tweaked, such as foot­ball match­es hav­ing mid-halve breaks for wa­ter, ear­li­er wa­ter breaks in crick­et, for ex­am­ple youth games, ad­just­ment of road races to re­duce the risks of ex­haus­tion es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to recre­ation­al run­ners. Dry, hard, dusty grounds that pose phys­i­cal in­jury risks to ath­letes such as crick­eters, foot­ballers, and rug­by play­ers, as well as per­sons who suf­fer from res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems.

In a re­gion where wa­ter is a pre­cious but scarce com­mod­i­ty, the chal­lenge is to find suit­able al­ter­na­tives to the use of potable wa­ter to keep crick­et, foot­ball, and rug­by fields as well as golf cours­es have to be found. An­oth­er catch-22 sit­u­a­tion that sport and the en­vi­ron­ment present is find­ing al­ter­na­tive means to keep run­ners/wa­ters hy­drat­ed while re­duc­ing the im­pact of plas­tic.

There­fore, there is a lot for lo­cal and re­gion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to con­sid­er re­gard­ing their con­tri­bu­tion to meet­ing the UN's en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able goals.