Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consolidate knowledge and benchmark the progress being made across the 32 International Federations (IFs) in the Summer Olympic Programme. Design/methodology/approach: A website content analysis, analytical hierarchy of information, and social media research was conducted to triangulate the barriers and drivers of environmental sustainability (ES) progress. This data was then analysed to empirically substantiate the findings of previous methods by exploring potential drivers of IF ES progress and communication and refining the ranking of IF ES progress. Results and findings: World Sailing is by far the most advanced IF in terms of ES progress, followed by World Athletics. Only 4 out of 32 have any sort of strategic ES plans. Only golf, surfing, football, sailing, and hockey have received any academic attention. There is a significant lack of understanding of environmental practices across sport, and their drivers/barriers. There is limited accountability with regards to ES progress and activities throughout the Olympic Movement. This has resulted in uneven diffusion of environmental activities. Originality: This paper is a new contribution to sport management and ES literature. It provides a benchmark of understanding for ES in the Summer Olympic Programme for the first time using a hierarchy of information to ground results. The exploration and comparison of the perspectives of separate sports adds to the paper's originality.
Highlights
Climate change has and will have a plethora of negative effects on all global anthropogenic systems, posing a variety of risks for the sport sector (Edenhofer et al, 2015)
This paper aims to create a benchmark environmental sustainability (ES) progress ranking across the 32 International Federations (IFs) in the Summer Olympic Programme
The Hierarchy of Progress (HoP) revealed that only 15 IF websites featured the term “sustainability” in reference to the environment, one of which was cosmetic in nature
Summary
Background Climate change has and will have a plethora of negative effects on all global anthropogenic systems, posing a variety of risks for the sport sector (Edenhofer et al, 2015). All aspects of all sports exert an impact on the natural environment, due to the bidirectional relationship that exists, it is in the best interest of the sporting sector to preserve the natural environment (Brymer et al, 2009; Brymer & Gray, 2010; McCullough et al, 2016). This is especially true for those sports whose very existence depends on the ability to directly interact with the natural environment, such as watersports (Gilchrist & Wheaton, 2017; Humberstone, 2011; Krein, 2014). In response to accelerating climate change, the Olympic Movement’s (OM) engagement in environmental sustainability (ES) activities has increased over the past decade (McCullough et al, 2020b)
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