Can we really measure the ecological footprint of the Olympics?

The French cap­it­al is pre­par­ing to host the Olympic Games. With an ath­letes’ vil­lage, sports facil­it­ies and mil­lions of vis­it­ors to wel­come, it is hard to ignore the envir­on­ment­al impact of such an event. “The main source of green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions from the Olympic Games is from vis­it­or flights, fol­lowed by the con­struc­tion of new build­ings,” explains Mar­tin Müller. The organ­isers are prom­ising to lim­it emis­sions: while the pre­vi­ous Sum­mer Games emit­ted between 3 and 4 mil­lion tonnes of CO₂ equi­val­ent (CO₂e, a unit that includes all green­house gases), Par­is 2024 is prom­ising to halve this figure.

Hold­ing this sort of an event will always have more of an impact than if it didn’t take place.

It must be said that this is not a new issue, and the Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) – the organ­ising body of the mod­ern Games – has also made it a pri­or­ity. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is one of the pil­lars of the 2020 Olympic Agenda 2020, the IOC’s stra­tegic roadmap, and the organ­ising cit­ies have a duty to demon­strate the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the event. “It is import­ant to reduce green­house gas emis­sions, but to say that the Games are sus­tain­able makes no sense: hold­ing this sort of an event will always have more of an impact than if it didn’t take place,” asserts Mar­ie Delaplace.

What exactly are these impacts? A team from the Uni­ver­sity of East Lon­don car­ried out an impact study¹ on the Lon­don 2012 Sum­mer Games for the IOC. Of the 67 indic­at­ors con­sidered, 15 con­cerned envir­on­ment­al impact. For ten of them, the Games had a pos­it­ive impact: the cre­ation of green spaces thanks to the redevel­op­ment of a former indus­tri­al waste­land, improve­ments to the rail infra­struc­ture (par­tic­u­larly in East Lon­don), new waste treat­ment facil­it­ies (par­tic­u­larly haz­ard­ous waste), an increase in the sup­ply of accom­mod­a­tion and the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of new build­ings. As for the oth­er sev­en, they are assessed as being neg­li­gible: water qual­ity in the River Lee, air qual­ity, land use, etc. And even GHG emis­sions thanks to emis­sions off­set­ting ini­ti­at­ives (which amoun­ted to 3.3 mil­lion tonnes CO₂e). No indic­at­or has a neg­at­ive impact. Over­all, the authors gave the event an aver­age sus­tain­ab­il­ity rat­ing (0.56 out of 1) for the envir­on­ment­al indic­at­ors, three years after the Games were held.

But the sci­entif­ic com­munity is divided on the issue of the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the Olympic Games. “In essence, they fol­low a prin­ciple of growth, which runs counter to the main prin­ciple of sus­tain­ab­il­ity, namely the idea of liv­ing well while lim­it­ing the con­sump­tion of resources,” says Mar­tin Müller. Nev­er­the­less, the debate con­tin­ues among sci­ent­ists, as Mar­tin Müller and his col­leagues describe in the journ­al Nature sus­tain­ab­il­ity²: for some, mega-events like the Olympics rep­res­ent an oppor­tun­ity to pro­mote and present innov­at­ive solu­tions to glob­al chal­lenges, and are polit­ic­al levers towards sustainability.

How can we assess the real impact of an event like this? “The term “cli­mate neut­ral­ity” is some­times used, but this is a mar­ket­ing term based on car­bon account­ing: off­set­ting emis­sions by buy­ing car­bon cer­ti­fic­ates,” explains Mar­tin Müller. “Research has shown that many of these cred­its are unre­li­able and do not com­pensate for what they prom­ise.” Although the IOC is ask­ing cit­ies to demon­strate their sus­tain­ab­il­ity, sci­ent­ists believe that the organ­isa­tion is incap­able of guar­an­tee­ing envir­on­ment­ally sus­tain­able Olympic Games³: none of the recent edi­tions of the Games has achieved the envir­on­ment­al object­ives ini­tially prom­ised. Rio 2016, Beijing 2008, Van­couver 2010, Lon­don 2012 or Sochi 2014: the authors provide a long list of ref­er­ences to back up their find­ings. “The indic­at­ors con­sidered by the IOC are far too gen­er­al and glob­al,” adds Mar­ie Delaplace. “Rather than think­ing in terms of impact, which implies a caus­al rela­tion­ship, it is more rel­ev­ant to talk about co-pro­duc­tion. This reflects what hap­pens dur­ing an event which, in fact, is anchored in time and space. This requires us to reas­on on a micro-ter­rit­ory scale.”

Look­ing at the 16 edi­tions of the Olympic Games held between 1992 and 2020, Mar­tin Müller and his col­leagues assess the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the Games. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is defined by a lim­ited eco­lo­gic­al and mater­i­al foot­print, improved social justice and eco­nom­ic effi­ciency. Over­all, sus­tain­ab­il­ity is aver­age (reach­ing a score of 48/100). Eco­lo­gic­al indic­at­ors are even worse, scor­ing 44/100. Worse still, the authors show that sus­tain­ab­il­ity – and par­tic­u­larly eco­lo­gic­al aspects – has been declin­ing since 1992. Sochi 2014 and Beijing 2008 received the worst scores for eco­lo­gic­al aspects. Con­versely, Alber­tville 1992, Bar­celona 1992, Salt Lake City 2002 and Athens 2004 achieved the best eco­lo­gic­al scores.

On the oth­er hand, the “long-term viab­il­ity” indic­at­or, based on the use of the facil­it­ies after the event, scores highly (76/100). It raises anoth­er import­ant issue: what is the leg­acy of these events? The Par­is 2024 organ­isers state, for example, that the Ath­letes’ Vil­lage, built on a former indus­tri­al waste­land, will be trans­formed into a sus­tain­able dis­trict of the city⁴. “A sim­il­ar trans­form­a­tion has taken place in Lon­don: there are a num­ber of debates around the gentri­fic­a­tion of the area versus social mix,” says Mar­ie Delaplace. “The same con­tro­ver­sies are now play­ing out regard­ing Seine-Saint-Denis.” Some of the facil­it­ies built for the Games (not­ably pub­lic trans­port) are of use to the loc­al pop­u­la­tion after­wards, as was the case in Lon­don, but their use­ful­ness is more dis­puted in Rio and Athens. “The ques­tion of the leg­acy of the Games is not easy to assess: the dif­fi­culty lies in hav­ing data that is suf­fi­ciently old to identi­fy the true tra­ject­ory of the co-pro­duc­tion of the leg­acy of the Games,” adds Mar­ie Delaplace. “Some pro­jects would have taken place without the Games, while oth­ers were imple­men­ted dur­ing the city’s pre­vi­ous bids. It is dif­fi­cult to identi­fy the actu­al start­ing point.” Mar­tin Müller adds: “It is the­or­et­ic­ally pos­sible to take advant­age of these events to accel­er­ate low-car­bon trans­itions, for example by intro­du­cing clean energy more quickly. But little research has been car­ried out, and pre­vi­ous stud­ies have shown that the Olympic Games pro­duce show­case effects, but fail to accel­er­ate more import­ant struc­tur­al changes.”

Are there ways of recon­cil­ing cli­mate change mit­ig­a­tion and the Olympic Games? The sci­ent­ists sug­gest sev­er­al approaches. Firstly, gov­ernance, to cor­rect the IOC’s lack of effect­ive incent­ives for sus­tain­ab­il­ity. While the envir­on­ment­al impact of new con­struc­tion is undeni­able, some sug­gest that the Games should be held in rota­tion in the same cit­ies. “An import­ant step would be to bring the Olympic Games to the people, rather than bring­ing the people to the Olympic Games,” con­cludes Mar­tin Müller. “The idea would be to have much smal­ler sta­di­ums and for vis­it­ors to enjoy the Games in fan zones around the world, rather than trav­el­ling by plane”

Anaïs Marechal