Football and Climate Change Newsletter #1
World Cup 2022, players' and fans' climate actions, new plans, jobs, upcoming events and more!
Welcome!
This newsletter provides a selection of recent news and reports on how climate change impacts football and football impacts climate change.
It goes out as the global ‘COP 27’ climate talks have just kicked off in Egypt, and with the World Cup 2022 coming very soon.
Developments in the last two weeks:
World Cup 2022: carbon-neutrality questioned (covered by BBC Sport online, BBC Sport Today radio, The Athletic, Bloomberg and Emergency on Planet Sport podcast)
Impacts: Football for the Future blog on games called off due to heavy rainfall
Players:
Marcelo joins the We Play Green campaign
David Wheeler talks to The Mirror about his environmental activism
Former player Matthew Flamini interviewed on decarbonisation in the chemical industry
Actions:
Bristol Rovers lead the Pledgeball League of carbon emissions saved through pledges, with Burnley, FK Crvena Zvezda, Bristol City and Watford behind them.
Northampton Town and Manchester United are leading the standings in the Planet Super League Cup of green actions, as it enters its final week.
Northampton Town also hosted a matchday Sustainability Day with partners in October to showcase practical actions.
Plans:
The Football Association of Wales launched its Sustainability Strategy 2030
Also in the News:
What on Earth: How Phony Environmentalism Came to Sports. Sports Illustrated. The article takes the World Cup 2022 as a starting point and then takes a broader look at sport and climate action.
How to Get on TV. London Review of Books. The article, by David Goldblatt, looks at Qatar and the World Cup in a much broader context than others I’ve read.
Fossil fuels and football – how deep are the links? The Athletic
French Football Federation embarks on the carbon contribution L'Équipe
Reports: Protecting the Playing Field: A baseline on how sport can act for nature United Nations Environment Programme / Loughborough University. Published ahead of a new UN Sports for Nature Framework to be launched in December
Tools: A new Sports Partner Score Card aims to provide a toolkit for addressing the sustainability credentials of potential sponsors and partners
Upcoming Events:
Field of Dreams: Creating a Grassroots Net Zero Football Club, De Montfort University, 11th November, Leicester
COP27: We Play Green Panel date tbc during COP
Sport as a Way to Communicate Behaviour Change, Communicate 2002 Conference, 15th November, online
Soccer in a Warming World Workshop, 16th November, Columbia Climate School, New York & online
Future Football Club, Game Earth Fund, 21st November, Paris
Jobs:
Awards: BASIS Sustainable Sport Awards 2022 included several from the football world
COP 27: Two new United Nations documents. These are not football or sport specific, but for all sectors, though should be helpful:
Climate Change 2021: Summary For All. A plain-language explainer about climate change
Integrity Matters. Recommendations for businesses on how to deliver on net-zero pledges and plans. “It’s Time to Draw a Red Line Around Greenwashing”
Resources: A ‘World Cups 2022 and 2023’ section has been added to the newly updated ‘Resources’ page here on the Football and Climate Newsletter.
This is the first version of this newsletter. In the future, I expect to also provide some more information and analysis on the content of the links. I might also occasionally take a current issue or two and look at it in a bit more depth. How do those suggestions sound?
Please send any comments or suggested corrections or changes to this newsletter, or suggestions for future content, to: footballandclimatechange@gmail.com
All summaries, views, errors and omissions are my own. Links provided to articles in this newsletter are not endorsements of the views in them.
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
@fbandclimate
footballandclimatechange@gmail.com