Changing Attitudes?
Lack of understanding is echoed in the UN’s report on the environmental impact of the sports sector. It states that while initiatives are being put in place, they often don’t have hard targets, mechanisms for control, or a sense of urgency.
Football for Future’s Barney Weston returned to the idea of commercialisation in sport, suggesting that reframing climate change as a business threat may generate the urgency necessary to drive action.
Changing Attitudes?
Lack of understanding is echoed in the UN’s report on the environmental impact of the sports sector. It states that while initiatives are being put in place, they often don’t have hard targets, mechanisms for control, or a sense of urgency.
Football for Future’s Barney Weston returned to the idea of commercialisation in sport, suggesting that reframing climate change as a business threat may generate the urgency necessary to drive action.
“We might understand that climate change poses a problem to the planet and that it’s in our moral interest to act. But nowadays, it’s more about the commercial side than the sport, and climate change poses a commercial risk to what you’re doing. Increased extreme weather events are going to become more frequent and they will impact your business operations and match days as a result. Perhaps we need to start thinking about it in that sense.
“Right now, no-one’s really thinking about climate adaptation strategies at their club. No-one’s thinking if their club will survive when there’s a flood or more heatwaves. If we communicated how climate change affects commercial activities and why it’s in our interest to adapt to this impending risk, people might take it more seriously.”
Agreeing with Barney, Michelle developed his point to include the importance of marketing in engaging fans towards change: “The crisis response is very topical. I think that storytelling is going to be critical in creating change.
We need to bring the fans with us on the journey. We’ve started with the planet message, the climate change message, but we do need to get it back to the people and what it means for them.
There’s an important marketing communications exercise that we really need to invest in. We need brilliant people in marketing teams to help us tell that sustainability story.”
British Rowing’s Rachel Dulai pointed out that you don’t always need a huge budget to start making changes – just the right attitude. “British Rowing’s sustainability budget is quite small, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a change.
Some of it’s achieved through conversations, influence, all the sort of stuff we’ve touched on which doesn’t cost anything at all. So don’t be frightened, go for it, create your own KPI’s which don’t need to cost a lot of money. It’s possible to achieve things without huge budgets.”
Overall, our experts seemed to agree that while there’s still some way to go, the sector now understands that sustainability is no longer an option – it’s necessity. Russell Seymour believes education around climate change is the key to driving action. “One thing we’ve realised at BASIS is that over the past 18 months, we don’t have to persuade people to be sustainable anymore.
The questions we’re mostly getting are around what solutions are available. Even though there’s more learning to be done for the industry, we’re now at a stage where most people understand that they need to do something. It isn’t enough, but it’s more than it’s ever been.”