Sportswashing blights Olympics' strides on sustainability

You might be hooked on the glorious 2024 Paris Olympic Games after being amazed at the razzle-dazzle of the opening ceremony, as are we.

The games are both a victim and an accelerant of climate breakdown. After a deluge of rain during the opening ceremony, which took place on Earth’s hottest-recorded day ever, the events began in stifling heat; such extreme swings are typical of our altered climate, a study has pointed out.

This year’s games aimed to be “the greenest yet” and have set a new bar for environmental sustainability. Their laudable efforts include that 95% of stadiums are existing structures, replacing concrete with low-carbon building materials, using recycled plastic for stadium seating, and buying carbon offsets for spectator air travel.

Yet both the Olympics and Paralympics this year are sponsored by several major polluters who consistently oppose action on climate change and reducing air pollution: Air France, ArcorMittal and Toyota.

FFSA is a member of the sport for climate action network Cool Down, which wrote in a recent report that through promoting high-carbon products and services such as flights and cars, these three sponsorships alone could account for more than 30 million extra tonnes of CO2 emissions, with Toyota by far the biggest polluter.

“Such glaring contradictions echo the days when tobacco companies were common sponsors of sport,” the Cool Down report pointed out.

Except, of course, that climate breakdown poses a far graver threat to every aspect of our lives, including sports, than tobacco. World-class athletes and several Olympians recently joined climate scientists and heat physiologists to warn of the serious threat that extreme heat poses to competitors at events including the Paris Olympics, where average temperatures in early August have risen by 3.1C since 1024, when the capital last hosted the games.

“Not only do these sponsorship deals amount to sportswash for major polluters but the global heating that it worsens threatens the future sport and makes the Games famous logo look more like Olympic smoke rings in the sky,” wrote the authors of the report.

Paris 2024 initially positioned itself as the first climate-positive games, intending to remove, reduce or offset more emissions than it generates. It subsequently dropped these ambitions, aiming instead to reduce its carbon emissions by half compared to the average emitted in during the London and Rio games.

However, the Cool Down report authors note that Carbon Market Watch, the sustainability strategy for the Paris Games, “is incomplete and falls short of achieving transparency” as it “lacks detailed methodologies and comprehensive monitoring.”

The same report notes that the game’s sponsors “are not climate leaders, and the absence of climate criteria when selecting sponsors is a missed opportunity to influence large companies.”

It’s a pity. Paris has become a global leader in sustainable transformation through projects such as pushing cars from the city centre and becoming a cycling heaven. Nonetheless, “allowing these airlines, car manufacturers and global steels producers, with their vast environmental footprints, to leverage the spirit, allure and imagery of the Olympics is a dereliction of duty to athletes and fans alive today and those yet to be born,” state the authors of the report.

“Through the Olympics, these companies have an unrivalled prominence and influence in front of an audience of billions.”

Our membership of Cool Down is not the only stand that FFSA has taken against sportswashing. Last year, in a Daily Maverick opinion piece, we pointed out the sad irony of South Africa’s largest private emitter of greenhouse gases, Sasol − whose extreme climate and air pollution disproportionately affects women and children − sponsoring our national women’s soccer team Banyana Banyana.

This sportwashing story is a sobering one, but there’s a context of progress as organisations across the world do their utmost to to help shape a sustainable world. To find out more about our Fossil Ad Ban and Clean Creatives campaigns here.