Sustainable Innovation in Sport: acting on the climate threat

The COP21 summit in Paris will be the biggest opportunity in some time for the world’s leaders to create powerful, workable new policies to fight climate change.

Alongside the main event, at the Sustainable Innovation in Sport conference at the Stade de France, there will be a chance to discuss what contribution sport can make.

From 30th November until 11th December, ministers, policy makers and international representatives from across the globe will descend upon Paris for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP21.

The conference is being billed as the most important climate summit in history and, after a series of missed opportunities and false starts at COP meetings in recent years, is increasingly viewed as a last chance to agree a workable binding global policy on climate change. In total, 50,000 delegates are expected in Paris over this two-week period.

The most specific and ambitious aim of COP21 is to reach a universally acceptable agreement on the issue of climate change, applicable to all countries, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C. Generally, the meeting presents an opportunity for debate and dialogue on climate and the environment across all sectors of society.

The opportunity of the sports industry to enter the debate comes at the beginning of COP21’s second week in the form of Sustainable Innovation in Sport (SIS), a side event to Climate Action’s Sustainable Innovation Forum (SIF) at Paris’ Stade de France. Over two days on 7th and 8th December, France’s national stadium will host SIF’s discussions on the evolving role of business in the environment. SIS, meanwhile, runs for half a day on the afternoon of 7th December.

Organised by Climate Action in partnership with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the high patronage of the French Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sport and in association with the Green Sports Alliance, SIS will convene over 100 leaders from governments, the UN, sports leagues, clubs and governing bodies and corporate sustainability leaders. Representatives from sports industry heavyweights such as Uefa, the National Hockey League (NHL) and Roland Garros are among those confirmed as speakers at the event, alongside inspirational sports figures who are highly tapped into environmental issues such as UNEP Goodwill Ambassador and pioneer swimmer Lewis Pugh and Olympic silver medal-winning snowboarder and Protect Our Winters board member Gretchen Bleiler.

“This conference has everything to do with who we are and what we’re doing" - Fernão Silveira, integrated public affairs leader at Dow. 

Arguably what makes the conference stand apart, however, are its partners and speakers from outside of sport’s occasionally closed bubble. In its headline sponsor Dow and silver sponsor BT, SIS has engaged two brands with a history of involvement in sport but whose key focuses lie outside it; this outward-facing approach demonstrates SIS’s connection with the broader COP21 focus.

Sport’s relationship with wider socio-political issues has often been fraught, with an unfortunate history of senior figures from within the industry – notably the currently suspended Fifa chief Sepp Blatter – insisting that sport and politics exist entirely independently from one another. Although it must be pointed out that there is significant objection to this train of thought, one of SIS’s key objectives is to reinforce sport’s interconnectedness with the rest of the world, and to discuss and demonstrate how sport can aid in the efforts to tackle climate change.

For Dow, the world’s second-largest chemical manufacturer, involvement in SIS is part of a continued effort over the past few decades to shoulder its responsibilities with regards to the environment, and work with sporting bodies to help them do the same. “This conference,” says Fernão Silveira, integrated public affairs leader at Dow, “has everything to do with who we are and what we’re doing.”

Dow’s commitment to combatting climate change and developing its green credentials stretches back at least 20 years. “Our first set of sustainability goals was established in 1995,” says Silveira. “Since then, every ten years, we update our goals. We make them bolder, we make them broader, and this year we announced the third generation of our sustainability goals.”

COP21 and the SIS conference offer Dow an opportunity to show off the progress it has made on this front, and outline its direction and plans for the future. Dr Neil Hawkins, chief sustainability officer and corporate vice president at the Dow Chemical Company, will lead the opening keynote address, while Dr Nicoletta Piccolrovazzi, technical and sustainability director at Dow Olympic & Sports Solutions, will speak on the day’s first panel session, which will discuss the crucial role of sustainability in sporting events to combat climate change.

That is something with which Dow is more than familiar. As one of the 12 companies on the worldwide Olympic TOP sponsorship programme, Dow has invested heavily in helping the International Olympic Council (IOC) become a greener, more sustainable organisation. This culminated in the group’s appointment as the official carbon partner for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games and 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio.

“Thanks to our work with Sochi, that became the first Olympic Games in history to have the direct carbon footprint of its organising committee mitigated even before the opening ceremony,” Silveira explains. 

“After we became a partner of the Olympics we realised that one of our key areas of contribution could be and should be sustainability, helping to make the games more sustainable and high-performing,” he adds. “This has been one of our key missions since we joined The Olympic Partner [TOP] programme.”

“SIS is a great opportunity for BT to share our passions and strengths and highlight the powerful role that sport can have to inspire people to live and work more sustainably."

“We’re looking forward to going to [the SIS conference] to share our updates, share our learnings, talking about what we’ve done in Russia, what we’re going to do in Rio, and also to keep the dialogue open,” says Silveira. “It is important for us to hear input and to discuss with this very specialised and special community focused on carbon and climate change. We want to be part of the discussion and share what we’re doing and show how the Olympic movement is contributing to a more sustainable future.”

Where Dow is working closely with sporting bodies and rights holders, BT is hoping to use SIS demonstrate how sport’s unique global reach can help to lead the fight against climate change using a bottom-up approach, engaging with fans through its recently launched 100% Sport initiative.

“When Chelsea played their London rivals Tottenham Hotspur on New Year’s Day this year, 1.7 million BT Sport customers tuned in,” says Niall Dunne, chief sustainability officer at BT Group. “Imagine if just ten per cent of those, a mere fraction of the UK’s football fans, switched to renewable energy. That’s the carbon saving equivalent of taking almost 50,000 cars off the road every year.

“We launched 100% Sport with Ben Ainslie in September with the aim to inspire people and organisations to switch to renewable electricity,” Dunne adds. “It was just the beginning of our ambition to work with others to inspire sport fans around the world to take action to combat climate change and support actions towards the Global Goals – making 100 per cent renewable energy use the new normal.”

Dunne will speak on the final panel session of the afternoon, which will address the positive climate legacy sporting events can leave behind and how stakeholders in the industry can help to create a sustainable movement. BT as an organisation is a natural fit as a partner for the SIS conference with its existing sustainability ventures and, through its BT Sport arm, significant reach and influence over millions of sports fans.

“We’re excited to be part of Sustainable Innovation in Sport: as a leading sustainable business, as a major investor in ICT and tech innovation, as well as a sports broadcaster,” Dunne says. “SIS is a great opportunity for BT to share our passions and strengths and highlight the powerful role that sport can have to inspire people to live and work more sustainably.

“Communications technology has a vital and unique role to help everyone live and work more sustainably. At BT, we switched to 100 per cent renewable electricity in 2012. Worldwide, 93 per cent of our electricity is powered by renewables and we’re aiming to make this 100 per cent by 2020. But it’s not just about the energy we use as a company – we measure our impact end to end and helping our customers and suppliers live more sustainably is important to us. To make the biggest difference, the real opportunity is to use our scale and reach.”

 

Originally posted at www.sportspromedia.com HERE