Sports Needs a World Sustainability Agency
By: Tom
Tags: Sports, Sustainable Development, Sustainability, Climate Action, Climate Change

Sports Needs a World Sustainability Agency

The World Anti Doping Agency showed the world how it could look like

Photo by Jesse Collins on Unsplash

In Germany, my home country, the state is governed by three pillars: Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary. They build the foundation of the state and ensure democracy. Because they are distinctively separated, they can self regulate the state. Contrary to politics, sports has a much different structure. The legislature, executive, and Judiciary lie mostly in the hands of the clubs and associations.

When it comes to sustainability, sports does not have an agency that controls their actions and hands out punishments for their inaction. However, when one looks at how successful the fight against doping in sports has been, it gets clear what needs to be done: Sports needs an independent World Sustainability Agency.

In my previous article, I have discussed many instances where the biggest sports organization of the world, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has failed to deliver the promised actions concerning sustainability. Recently people have voiced doubts about the current system mainly because multiple big sports associations have been repeatedly rocked by scandals left and right.

From the Salt Lake City Bribery Scandal in the Olympic Games in 2000 to the FIFA corruption case in 2015 and the Festina Doping Scandal in 1998, sports has a rich history of power abuse.

While the former two scandals concerned individuals, the doping scandal attacked the integrity of sports itself. The Tour de France and the entire sport of cycling still suffer from the aftermath of the doping case. And while the cyclists were the scapegoats, they were far from the only athletes that systematically doped. The IOC knew then that if they would not act now, sports would lose the trustworthiness and integrity it needed to attract viewers. Therefore, in 1999 they founded the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), an independent organization with the task to combat systematic doping. The vision of WADA is to create “a world where all athletes can participate in a doping-free sporting environment”. Continuing, they made it their mission “to lead a collaborative worldwide movement for doping-free sport”. Keep that in mind, I will come back to that later.

Since then the IOC has evolved from being a passive observer of doping towards actively working to combat it. They have since made it mandatory for all sports Olympic sports federations to join the WADA Code. Furthermore, they have even installed an independent court of justice: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). That court is crucial because it can decide on important cases and also hand out binding punishments. If an athlete tests positive for doping (s)he can choose to appeal the decision at the CAS. If the appeal is denied the CAS has the right to sanction said athlete.

After I learned about these existing structures during my studies, I noticed a pattern. The fight against doping and for sustainability has more similarities than you think. When the public criticism around doping reached its height in the 1990s and threatened the integrity of sports, sports federations began to actively fight doping by establishing a certain set of binding regulations (WADA Code) and installing an independent court to decide about the punishment.

Concerning sustainability, sports is desperately missing a set of binding rules, but it already has an independent court. Therefore, I propose that the IOC needs to create a pendant to the WADA. To put it more simply, sports needs a World (Pro) Sustainability Agency.

The structures already exist.

During the end of the Netflix movie “A life on our planet” (10/10 movie, would recommend) the British explorer) the British explorer and new Instagram influencer David Attenborough tried to answer one important question: What can we do to protect the wilderness of our world? You ought to remember that many sports will go down together with the ecosystem. There is no surfing, sailing, or even swimming without clean waters. You can not run or bike when the air is polluted. The list goes on and on.

Sir Attenborough thought about the question for a second and then took all his 94 years of experience in this world and answered that we need international agreements. That is what the World Sustainability Agency is and therein lies the power of such an organization. The repeated failure of non-mandatory sustainability strategies in recent years is living proof that we need a universally applicable Code of Conduct.

The number one advantage this hypothetical organization would have is that nearly all structures already exist. As I laid out before, sports already has experience with a mandatory Code (WADA Code) and a court of justice has also already been created. This greatly reduces the starting cost. All the sports federations have to do is to appoint a working group.

Controlling is key

One reason why sustainability is hard to enforce on a global scale is that most of the time it includes a political decision. Especially once penalties are handed out, things can get chippy. Sporting events provide one of the biggest platforms for countries to present themselves. No country wants to miss out on the opportunity to participate in events like the World Cup or the Olympic Games. If everybody wants to partake in those mega-events then it gives the organizing body (in this case: the International Olympic Committee) the power to define the rules about participation. Following that logic, if a country’s sports federation does not meet the sustainability standards it cannot participate in the Olympic Games. It is like standing in front of a club and talking to the bouncer. It does not matter if you like it or not, to get in you must play by his rules.

That being said, sports has a rich history when it comes to political decisions. Numerous examples range from earlier actions such as the IOC’s ban of South Africa due to their political system to the recent ban of Russia due to their systematic doping. These examples show that the world of sports is willing to make political statements if necessary. Thus, when the World Sustainability Agency flags a country for its insufficient sustainability practices there will be a political debate. But as soon as the CAS pronounces a legally binding judgment the punishment will be carried out.

The World Sustainability Agency must have this legitimacy. Otherwise, there would not be any improvement over today’s situation where no federation is held accountable for their failings. No one will take the agency seriously if it is not mandatory for all federations to join. But if the newfound agency can make the rules as well as control their implementation then a sustainability standard could become as powerful as the WADA list.

Photo by Taylor Simpson on Unsplash

The way to integrity

Finally, there is one more thing a World Sustainability Agency can do for sports: Get back its integrity. That being said, there are many great sustainability initiatives in sports. But for every good initiative, there are as many negative headlines. One example is the German national soccer team that was flying from Stuttgart to Basel even though it is only a three-hour train ride. What are the fans supposed to think? This negative publicity deprives all integrity sports currently has when it comes to sustainability.

We have to acknowledge that the young generation and increasingly more people care about sustainability. It is no coincidence that groups like Fridays for Future gained so much traction. Those groups will call the sports federations out on their failed sustainability targets. And once they make those failings public the fans and viewers will take notice. Good luck explaining to climate-conscious people why you need to chop off trees in a protected rainforest area in Brazil to build a new golf course.

Admittedly, it may take some time but once the majority of people care about sustainability sports will have a similar problem to that of the 1990s. Its most valuable asset, its integrity will be lost. Nobody will want to watch World Cups or Olympic Games for the same reasons why nobody wanted to watch the Tour de France after the doping scandal. Revenues and spectator numbers will collapse, and the bottom line will be affected.

However, if sport federations and leagues recognize their potential to act as pioneers in society and starts being proactive when it comes to sustainability, those dystopian scenarios can be avoided. Sport is a big part of many people's lives, and by installing an independent World Sustainability Agency the federations would take an enormous step in the right direction. Countries will not want to miss out on the big sporting events. By having a binding Code of Conduct they will be forced to increase their measures to stage more sustainable sporting events.

I want to finish this by proposing a vision and mission statement for the World Sustainability Agency.