As climate alarm bells continue to ring, some researchers from the Sport for Development (SDP) sector are questioning calls for sport to play a major role in amplifying awareness about the impact of climate change among its billions of spectators, facilitators and participants, by asking what more there is to know before action is taken.
“What more do we actually need to know about the risks and threats of climate change and environmental degradation, and of the complicity and complacency of sport therein, before we acknowledge the necessity to act differently?” says Simon Darnell, a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) and director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies.
“The real challenge facing sport and its stakeholders is to imagine what a better future could look like, and the steps we might take to get there.”
Darnell and Rob Millington, an associate professor at Brock University, co-authored a paper for the Journal of Sport for Development in which they outline some of these steps, while arguing their point further.
“Sport scholars and journalists concerned about climate issues have been tracking the impact of certain sports on local ecosystems - from the reconstruction of local landscapes to air, water and noise pollution, and the use of chemicals in ice-resurfacing or pest-management,” says Darnell. “The environmental impact of sports mega-events like the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup is also well known.”
The evidence, he says, is jarring and holds profound implications not only for the future of sport, but for the planet as well, which is why he and Millington are proposing SDP stakeholders move away from imagining sport as a tool *for* sustainability and move towards the pursuit of sport *as* sustainable - and socially and ecologically just - in and of itself.
“Environmental issues need to be embedded in SDP,” says Darnell. “In such a framework, sport and SDP would not be viewed as external forces or agents that can be mobilized to address or overcome environmental emergencies, but would be understood as themselves deeply implicated in the environmental crisis.”
This re-imagining of SDP should be informed by several key principles, which are relevant to practitioners, policy- makers, governments, and funding-partners alike, say the researchers.
They are:
1. Environmental degradation and the climate crisis should no longer take a back seat to other development goals or issues within SDP policy. Instead, the issue of sustainability should be front and center in all SDP thinking, advocacy, activity, and funding from here on;
2. Sport can no longer be seen as an external tool to manage the environmental crisis, but rather of the environment, with positive and/or negative implications, none of which are determined;
3. SDP can be a leader in its activism and advocacy around a Dark Ecology, eco-justice approach that challenges the neo-colonial and neo-liberal underpinnings of SDP approaches and policies to privilege social, economic, and environmental justice.
“The World Meteorological Organization recently released a report that forecasts a 40 per cent chance that at least one of the next five years will reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the sustainability target set by the 2015 Paris climate accord,” says Darnell. “The clock is ticking.
“We know enough.
“Now is the time to think differently and to act accordingly.”