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2024 Paris Games to be first event for aligning sport with climate action
The 2024 Paris Games will be the first event to implement a full range of new measures aligning sport with development and climate action, Tania Braga, who heads the IOC legacy department, said ahead of the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, observed on 6 April.
The IOC focuses heavily on limiting the Games’ footprint. There are no new venues required for hosting. The focus is on using existing location and only building new ones if very clear long-term needs are in place. The 2028 Los Angeles Games are going for “radical reuse”. That means using 100 per cent of existing or temporary venues. In this regard, the 2024 Paris Games is currently at 95 percent, she said in an interview with the United Nations News Center.
“IOC has always been concerned about assessing and minimizing the Games’ impact on the environment and local communities. We have built a series of recommendations and requirements to help each organizer, host city, or region to adapt to challenges. We have a saying that guides everything we do: The host city or region doesn’t need to change to receive the Games, but the Games should adapt to the host city or region. We have some requirements, including certification for sustainability management and 50-percent emissions reductions, aligned with the Paris Agreement on climate change. Adapting to local needs while creating a maximum positive impact on communities and reducing the local negative environmental impact – that’s the spirit,” she said.
Braga said Agenda 2020 became a real game changer in the way the IOC chooses the hosts and manages the Games. Sustainability was present on a voluntary basis as early as the 1994 Lillehammer Games. With Agenda 2020, sustainability became part of the heart of the Games. As the climate crisis is accelerating, we need to answer strongly. IOC addresses other global issues, such as obesity and its link with the lack of physical activity, which we know from World Health Organization (WHO) data. Over five million deaths could be avoided every year if people were more active. We now require hosts to establish lasting policies to address such concerns. At the Paris Games, 75 percent of suppliers are small and middle-sized enterprises, key actors in addressing economic inequalities. It’s really impressive they reached this level when the benchmark is around 10 percent.
“I think each edition of the Games will have a different set of challenges. For some, they will be more focused. Some areas are very important and always present for us, for example, health and wellbeing, climate, biodiversity, and mobility, and how hosts can contribute to accelerating local policies on sustainable cities and bringing new technology,” she said.
The Tokyo Games accelerated energy policies in Japan, demonstrating how they could make steps towards a low-carbon economy by powering the athletes’ village with hydrogen from clean, green sources. Paris is focused on the challenge of physical inactivity, using the Games as an opportunity to push the French Government to adopt a new national policy for elementary school students to get an additional 30 minutes of daily physical activity, she added.
She noted that IOC is partnering with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on the Sports for Climate Action initiative and has mobilized its network of 31 international federations, who must commit to 50-percent emissions reductions. These are some examples of measures or even of using just the power and the visibility of the Olympic Games to bring issues to the attention of the global audience. We have an audience; for the Tokyo Games, there were 3.5 billion viewers.
As sustainability is one of the three pillars of the Olympic Agenda 2020, “Going forward, we will see the full impact because the Games have a long life cycle; Paris was elected seven years ago, and Los Angeles, 11 years before. Paris will be the first edition to have the full impact of Agenda 2020 and then we can see the results. There are a lot of things still to work on, and we continue to collaborate with editions. It’s an evolving agenda. What inspires me is the possibility to drive positive changes and to influence this change with different organizations in the network,” she concluded.
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