The New Sustainability Tool To Climate-Proof Your Sports Organization

Sports organizations worldwide are learning to deal with the hazards of climate change. From flooded fields to extreme heat and air pollution, no athlete or sport is safe from the increasingly unpredictable weather patterns fueled by climate change. With that in mind, Football For Future, Common Goal, and Adidas have come together to launch Fields of Change, a handbook “designed to help grassroots organisations integrate environmental sustainability into their work.”

The new sustainability handbook was developed over the past year and incorporates examples from a year-long collaboration (Move for the Planet) with nine sport-for-good organizations from the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions. It is meant to be a “knowledge-sharing resource,” that increases awareness, inspires engagement, and drives locally relevant solutions by “offering practical tools and guidance on sustainability in sport.”

According to Elliot Arthur-Worsop, founder of Football For Future, this handbook is different from other sustainability resources because it was built “by sport for good organisations, for sport for good organisations.” It uses sports as its visual and linguistic frame, communicating climate issues in a common language. Moreover, it is open to different levels of engagement and awareness, so it can be used anywhere by anyone.

At just over 50 pages, the handbook explains the connection between sports and the environment, introduces the Move for the Planet initiative that helped shape it, and delves into specific subtopics like sustainable infrastructure, waste, leadership, and communication. It also provides examples of community learning from the nine participatory Move for the Planet grassroots organizations and adds a glossary and references for those who want further information. It is a complete resource that Inter Milan midfielder and climate action advocate Sofie Junge Pedersen says “educates well about the changing climate.”

Fields of Change breaks down the sports industry’s ability to become more sustainable into two branches: operational sustainability and social sustainability. Operationally, any organization, from the local Pop Warner football team to the Major League Baseball team, can improve processes, procedures, procurement, and policies. Socially, organizations need to look at education, increasing awareness, changing attitudes and values, and training new behaviors.

Operational and social sustainability are both crucial, but the latter seems to be why this handbook focuses on grassroots organizations. Jérémy Houssin, Sustainability and Environmental Lead at Common Goal, says local sports organizations can be agents of change and most importantly act as role models. Arthur-Worsop seconds that notion, adding that many of the important changes in the world begin as innovative solutions in local communities, but notes that these communities lack the platform to share them with the world. Still, small-scale organizations are more agile and adaptable, and they are where the leaders of tomorrow are being educated.

Emilio Martinez is the Regional Project Manager for love.fútbol in Mexico City. The nonprofit focuses on reclaiming and redefining sports spaces “as inclusive environments for children to play, grow, and learn.” Emilio admits that despite heatwaves and drought becoming more commonplace, awareness about climate change in the general community is very low. However, using the materials provided by Move for the Planet (which form the backbone of the handbook) love.fútbol has been able to leverage interest in sports to educate the youth and initiate action. He adds that working with Move for the Planet created an awakening in his community and gave them a power they didn’t have previously.

Emilio dreams that someday everyone in Mexico “will have some awareness of climate change’s impact.” He hopes that public policies and media coverage will be shaped around the issue and that it will be inserted into school curricula. For now, he is doing his part, using the thing people love most to effectively communicate about climate action with every corner of the community. He is so happy with the knowledge Fields of Change has provided his nonprofit, he says love.fútbol’s next goal is to distribute the manual to colleagues and allies to help share the knowledge and create more climate action.

One continuous theme in Field of Change is the idea that sports have the unique potential to inspire positive change. According to the writers, “Nothing is more important than protecting the planet, and no social phenomenon is more powerful than sport.”

Sofie Junge Pedersen, who last year helped organize the largest-ever women-led sports climate campaign, says this handbook gives community sports organizations the chance to be part of the fight. It provides clear explanations of the challenges — currently, the planet is losing a soccer field’s worth of rainforest every six seconds — and points out simple solutions that can help reduce organizational impact, like conducting life cycle assessments, introducing smart recycling, and monitoring water quality and water usage.

However, the handbook does not shy away from the industry’s role in perpetuating climate change. According to it, the sports industry emits roughly 300 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions each year, a number on par with France’s annual emissions. It also continues to accept sponsorship from the oil and gas industry, threatening its future, and pursues more events and more international opportunities despite saturated schedules and increased travel.

Pedersen would like to see the opposite; a sports industry that self-regulates so that transportation, and thereby emissions, are reduced. With 3.5 billion soccer fans around the world, 2.5 billion cricket global cricket fans, and live sports becoming the dominant broadcast in the U.S., the sports industry has an unprecedented platform that it can use to inspire people. It is needed now more than ever.

Since Pelé lifted the FIFA World Cup in 1970, the world has seen a 70% decline in natural biodiversity. If emissions aren’t curbed, by the 2032 Brisbane Olympics the world will almost certainly have exceeded the 1.5℃ target set in the Paris Agreement. Fields of Change is the tailor-made guidebook enabling sports communities around the world to address the climate crisis and implement small-scale solutions that can drive climate action from the ground up.https://footballforfuture.org/