Editor’s note: This column is revised from the print edition.
On May 23, more than 120 representatives from some of the world’s most influential sports federations and businesses convened at the
National Institute of Sport in Paris for the inaugural Congress of Sport and Sustainability International.
Sport and Sustainability International (SandSI.org) is a global organization committed to promoting the Paris Agreement, the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and other urgently needed environmental initiatives. Its formation is the result of meetings that took place over the past two years among some of the world’s top sports industry sustainability experts in the Olympic capital of Lausanne, Switzerland, throughout 2015 and 2016, at the COP 21 in Paris in 2016, during the Sustainable Innovation in Sport Conference in Munich in February 2017, and now in Paris. At those meetings influential representatives from European, North American and other international sports organizations and businesses agreed that leveraging the influence of sport can be highly effective in promoting the Paris Agreement and the U.N. goals.
The SandSI Congress in Paris was an event of meaningful consequence for the global environmental movement, going well beyond being merely a sports trade association event. It reflected an unprecedented expression of support by the international sports industry for the world’s most meaningful ecological policies.
Participants at the Congress included representatives from 30 countries and six continents — Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and North and South America — representing soccer, rugby, tennis, motorsports, sailing, skiing, golf, cricket, cycling, equestrian sports, water sports, basketball and other sports. They joined together to focus on the threat that climate change poses to the games we love and the communities in which they are played. The focus of the SandSI Congress sought to ensure that sustainability is established as a key business principle throughout the global sports industry, leveraging their influence to promote healthy, sustainable and just communities.
As stated by Didier Lehenaff, former president of the European Triathlon Union and vice president of SandSI, “SandSI is raising sustainability to new heights in the world of sport. No more ‘sustainability in sport’ only. From now on, it is global sustainability through sport.”
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Participants at the Congress included representatives from 30 countries and six continents.
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The SandSI Congress occurred a few days preceding the start of European Sustainable Development Week, an initiative across Europe that takes place every year from May 30 to June 5 to showcase and help stimulate projects that promote the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.
For sport and sustainability advocates in the United States, the SandSI Congress offers direction for the next steps: While rising temperatures and other worsening ecological challenges increasingly pose unprecedented threats to the functional integrity of global ecosystems and human civilization, national environmental policies in the United States are moving in exactly the wrong direction. Indeed, in just his first 100 days of office, President Trump has reversed 23 important environmental laws, many of which are essential to address climate change and other unprecedented ecological threats. The president has canceled a requirement for reporting methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas; lifted a freeze on new coal leases on protected and ecologically rare public lands; revoked a rule that prevented coal mining companies from dumping mining debris into local streams in order to lower the cost of mountaintop removal coal mining; reopened previously agreed upon fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and; ordered an “immediate re-evaluation” of the Clean Power Plan, a central policy essential for the United States’ compliance with the Paris Agreement. Indeed, the president is even threatening to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement entirely.
None of this is good news for the planet and U.S.-based sports organizations that promote their commitment to sustainability should speak out against these policies. Accordingly, the SandSI Congress is something U.S.-based sports leagues, teams and events should take seriously. It is critical for the president to hear U.S. entities echo the support for the Paris Agreement being expressed by international sports federations. Moreover, as I wrote in a previous column, sustainability managers in U.S.-based sports organizations should follow the lead of international federations, teams and venues by calculating their carbon emissions and setting science-based carbon reduction targets.
Besides Lehenaff, the Paris SandSI Congress showcased many others who now constitute the new breed of globally influential sustainability experts in sports: Neil Beecroft, former Sustainability Manager for UEFA and SandSI’s president; Mael Besson, Sport and Sustainable Development Mission, French Ministry of Sport; Vincent Gaillard, director general of European Professional Club Rugby; Julia Palle, sustainability manager of Formula E; Vivianne Fraisse, social responsibility manager, French Tennis Federation; Julie Duffus, International Olympic Committee sustainability manager; Anne-Cecile Turner of the Volvo Ocean Race; Jonathan Smith, CEO of Scotland’s Golf Environment Organization; and many others were in attendance.
The SandSI Congress was also notable for the participation of Rick Fedrizzi, the founder and former CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council. Fedrizzi is arguably the single most influential person in the history of the green building movement, and his participation at the SandSI Congress in his new role as CEO of the International WELL Building Institute underscores the important role that health and wellness contributes to comprehensive sustainability programs.
Speaking at the SandSI Congress, Fedrizzi said, “Wellness is the watchword for sustainability’s next wave, putting people at the center of design and operational decisions in buildings that enhance our health and well-being, and once again, sports venues are helping us lead the way.”
The single most important thing we can do to protect the planet from climate change is shift cultural attitudes and expectations about how we relate to the Earth. Few sectors are as influential in helping to stimulate that shift as is the sports industry. The SandSI Congress in Paris confirmed that the sports world is intensifying its efforts to move our culture and economy in the right direction. Why? Because climate change is not a game we can afford to lose.
Allen Hershkowitz is a founding director of Sport and Sustainable International.
