Toshikazu Yamanishi competes in the 20km Race Walk at the 2022 World Championships (© Getty Images)
President Sebastian Coe’s consistent spotlighting of climate issues and their impacts on our sport earned World Athletics ‘Outstanding Leadership’ recognition for its environmental sustainability initiatives in a recent report charting the evolution of sustainability work by international sports federations.
The report, ‘Three Years of Progress: A Review of Sustainability Across the 2021-2024 Olympic Cycle’, offers a comprehensive review of the sustainability work of all international sport federations represented at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The review was conducted by the Sport Ecology Group, an international group of researchers working in the sport and sustainability space, in collaboration with The Sustainability Report, an online publication tracking and sharing the latest in sport and sustainability news and analysis.
The report aimed to provide a quick and accessible reference point on progress toward environmental sustainability agendas since the last Olympiad and to identify opportunities for further development in the next four years.
For its recognition, the report highlighted several World Athletics' efforts and initiatives:
- President Sebastian Coe's strong and consistent messaging around climate change and the perils it poses for sport
- The launch of the Athletics for a Better World Standard, which has set a number of binding environmental, social and governance obligations into the event bidding and licensing process, and
- The organisation's use of a variety of platforms to address the consequences of climate change
Broad evaluation of sport and sustainability efforts
While the federations reviewed are not uniformly equipped to address the mounting burdens of climate change and the urgent need for mitigation, the report’s author said, some important strides have been made since a similar study was conducted in the lead-in to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021.
Seventeen of the 36 summer sport federations reviewed have adopted sustainability strategies, and 10 have a full-time staff person dedicated to working on this agenda. In just the three years since the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (in summer 2021), 11 summer sports federations have joined the new Sports for Nature framework, and seven have signed onto the Sports for Climate Action framework, joining the 16 that were already signatories for a total of 23 signatories among the reviewed federations.
"These high-level indicators signal considerable commitment by the highest levels of sport to address ongoing environmental crises," the report reads. "This Olympic cycle was about federations joining the sustainability conversation. The next Olympic cycle will be about accelerating action."
World Athletics was one of three international federations whose efforts were highlighted.
World Sailing was recognised for 'Best Project', celebrating its education initiative titled Sustainability Sessions, which began in 2023, and the International Hockey Federation for 'Most Improved', acknowledging the rapid development of its sustainability efforts in the three years since 2021.
The Sport Ecology Group is a US-based non-profit with international membership, run by academics, aimed at driving sustainable change across the sports sector through research, teaching, and publicly accessible campaigns and events.
The Sustainability Report is an online publication tracking and sharing the latest in sport and sustainability news through up-to-the- minute news stories, in-depth analysis, inspirational and actionable case studies, and interviews with the people striving to create a more sustainable sports industry.
