Round-up #14
Ambition, disruption, sponsors, and other sports
“By using its unique global reach and cultural platform to influence, instigate, and inspire, football has the opportunity to lead from the front in the sector’s goal to reach net zero.”
UK Sport Strategy.
Welcome, welcome, to your latest round-up of developments from the last fortnight. Since the last round-up went out, I’ve put out an in-depth post on the plans for a football regulator in England and the case to include the environment in them.
I’ve also completed a quarterly update to the newsletter resources page. Additions include the Sustainable Football scorecard for clubs of all sizes to assess themselves against; the Game Changer Sponsorship Pledge aiming to bring an end to negative sponsors in sport; and a multimedia look at the future of football and climate issues by Sky.
Now let’s tuck into the big bag of news and developments over the last fortnight. This time around also dipping its toes into other sports too …
"If you care about sports, climate change is already affecting what you love. And that makes you the perfect person to talk about it!"
Prof. Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist in a new post dedicated to sport and climate
A United Nations survey on sport and climate change “aims to understand the potential of sports clubs and organisations in inspiring fans”. Share widely and fill it in!
More on the Climate Cup tournament pictured above in this widely syndicated piece from AP News looking at how officials are using football to highlight climate worries in India’s ecologically fragile Ladakh region.
Around Europe …
This article focuses on German football and includes a view that clubs there are still too defensive when it comes to sustainability. UEFA has launched its first-ever sustainable catering guidelines. The European Erasmus+ programme has awarded €400k to a project on “football as tool for environmental education”.
Footballers in action …
“How can I make a difference”, is an interview with Sofie Junge Pedersen on climate action. Pedersen has also been nominated for the World Football Summit Marcus Rashford Award with the Football for the Future team. Congrats!
David Wheeler in BusinessGreen on why sport has an unmatched opportunity to reach parts of society that nothing else can.
Club actions: Bristol City has become the first club to earn GreenCode Accreditation in the EFL Green Clubs scheme. Arsenal Academy joined forces with Football For Future to host climate education workshops. Forest Green Rovers announced they had extended their travel partnership which includes tracking and helping to reduce their carbon footprint. Wolves Foundation announced an electric vehicle partnership. Barcelona and Spurs announced third kits using recycled materials.
As Pedersen says in the above interview “I don’t want offsetting to be seen as the solution, because it’s not”. In this separate article on the Socceroos and Matildas offsetting, it is noted that “the forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier are largely worthless and could make global heating worse”. The risks with offsetting were touched on in Round-up #11 and have been covered in more depth in this report.
FIFA and the trading bloc of countries, ASEAN, are looking to expand their partnership to cover gender equality and climate change. It will be interesting to see what is agreed as a result of this.
“sustainability guidelines often remain confined to the limits of clubs’ foundations, rather than being fully integrated into a club’s core values and strategic vision”.
Carolina Pettersson Ruiz, Executive Director, We Play Green, speaking at the Thinking Football Summit.
US Tennis Open
Coco Gauff’s semi-final match was delayed by environmental activists. This led PBS News Hour to take a broader look at activists’ targeting of sporting events in the video below. The European Championship 2024 qualifying match between Norway and Georgia was also disrupted recently.
Daniil Medvedev’s comment that 'one player is going to die' due to extreme heat was reported globally. The Sky Sports US Open team provided a range of perspectives on the issue of climate change in tennis in this video. The issue of extreme heat in football was also covered in the last round-up.
Sponsors
In the short video below, Greenpeace takes a look at TotalEnergies sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup. The video led the tournament organisers to threaten legal action. TotalEnergies is also a sponsor of all of the Confederation of African Football's main competitions, including the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations.
In a BBC interview, former Australia rugby captain David Pocock has said oil companies should not sponsor World Cups. Forbes takes a look in the round at how environmentally sustainable the tournament will be.
Elsewhere, Fossil Free Football has drawn attention to the problem of a return of Gazprom to the Champions League. Separately, the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Galatasaray announced a sponsorship agreement. The Times covers Mont Blanc ultra runners call for a boycott over race sponsorship by a car manufacturer. And if zombies videos are your thing, see this rugby-themed piece from the Australia-based Fossil Ad Ban team. Separately, nominations are now open for the Bad Sports Awards 2023 for sportswashing and greenwashing.
Elsewhere
Working in Sport and Sustainability
Want To Find Work in Sport and Sustainability? Here are Some Expert Tips
Football for Future are recruiting for a number of roles
Food
3 Vegan Food Brands Scoring New Fans by Backing Their Favorite Sports Franchises
New academic research with footballers highlights “the viability of plant protein as a potential alternative to animal protein without compromising athletic performance or recovery”.
Events
The World Football Summit in Sevilla is on 20-21 September and will include a session on ‘building sustainable partnerships for a more sustainable future’.
The Sport Positive Summit, dedicated to sustainability, and in collaboration with UN Climate and IOC, will take place in London on the 3-4 October. Founder, Claire Poole, is interviewed about it here for the Green Sports Blog.
A manifesto for the Social Football Summit in November in Italy includes a focus on sustainability.
Ambition, and more generally in climate news …
“the world is on the cusp of a historic turning point … demand for each of the three fossil fuels is set to hit a peak … earlier than many people anticipated … [though declines are still] nowhere near steep enough to put the world on a path to limiting global warming to 1.5°C”
Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency (and Galatasaray fan), in the FT
The Corporate Leaders Europe group of top businesses urged the EU to raise its climate ambition in the run-up to 2040. Here’s hoping that soon leaders from top clubs are among those calling for the need for more ambition.
The United Nations Secretary-General is convening a ‘Climate Ambition Summit’ at the UN Headquarters in New York on 20 September 2023. I’ll keep a look out online to see if any from the world of football are present.
The Climate Ambition Summit takes place place during Climate Week in New York, for which Oliver Wyman have produced a report on how businesses can move from incremental “business as usual” moves to progress at scale. Hopefully it provides insights leading clubs can draw on too.
Climate Outreach published a report proposing a UK public engagement strategy on climate change with sector specific elements. Is a fan engagement strategy on climate change needed, and if so what might it look like?
The UK Committee on Climate Change published a report on the the implications of behavioural science for effective climate policy. What could the football community learn from this?
That’s time at the bar! The round-up will be back in a fortnight, or maybe just under if I get back on schedule. If you have any suggestions, comments or corrections - big or small - do drop a line. Until then, have a good one, and please like and share too.
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
footballandclimatechange@gmail.com
@fbandclimate