Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics promised the most innovative, impeccably run and "sustainable" Games ever, according to Elaine Kurtenbach of the AP. With just a little more than five years to go, doubts "are growing whether they will deliver on the last pledge." The World Wide Fund for Nature and others backing use of renewable energy and other standards, including Masato Mizuno, the sports-goods magnate who led Tokyo's bid for the Games, "issued a formal call for faster action." Taruyuki Ohno, a former Tokyo government official who helped draft the bid, said Tokyo was declared host for the 2020 Games in Sept. '13, and "at this point, a sustainability plan has not been made, so that is cause for concern." Shaun McCarthy, who headed London's effort to make those Games as sustainable as possible, said that
Tokyo "needs to specify in detail the standards it intends to meet." The Olympics "is at something of a crossroads as potential host cities reconsider the costs and benefits of staging such a major event." Organizers of the 2016 Olympics in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro "are under fire for a raft of problems, from a failure to clean up waterways, construction of an Olympic golf course inside a nature preserve and forced evictions of slum dwellers for urban renewal and roads." WWF Japan and Japan Renewable Energy Foundation "urged planners to make the 2020 Games as transformative for Japan's stagnant economy as the 1964 Games were for the country's ascent as an industrial power." Takejiro Sueyoshi, a former banker who is on the board of the renewable energy foundation, said, "The Olympics cannot be held without regard for the environment" (AP, 4/7).
