South Africa must shoot for green goals at 2010 World Cup

The 2010 World Cup is kicking off some positive initiatives, says Sheryl Ozinsky, but the host nation could be wide of the goal unless it greens a lot more than the pitch.

Getting to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup was a major first for South Africa. With the flurry of improvements in roads, airports, transit systems and new stadiums, it should be a logistical triumph. The same cannot be said for efforts to reach the Green Goal – launched by the 2006 Cup’s German hosts to make the tournament environmentally responsible and ‘carbon fair’. Host cities have been given some environmental guidelines to follow, but with the Cup only months away, the announcement of a national strategy has repeatedly been postponed, for reasons such as “the unavailability of certain VIPs due to unforeseen commitments”, or the need for more work on the logo…

Part of the problem lies with FIFA, the international football (‘soccer’ in South Africa) federation. It’s renowned for making host countries comply with reams of strict conditions, but it sorely lacks strong environmental leadership.

That said, there’s some progress underway. So far, seven of the nine host cities have plans to cut the event’s carbon footprint, and there are other initiatives afoot, too. Durban is planting 62,500 trees, and has teamed up with the Wildlands Conservation Trust to green the area near the city’s biggest landfill site. Johannesburg is planting 300,000 trees, and is rehabilitating the severely polluted Klipspruit River catchments area in Soweto. And Cape Town has embraced the green tourist rating scheme, GreenStaySA.

But as Werner Böhler of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (which helps fund and support Green Goal work) points out: “It is not good enough [just to give] host cities a document and then let them struggle”. There should be practical assistance on issues like water, waste, transport and energy, he says.

In an effort to tackle some of these issues, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) and the Department of Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) held a series of workshops aimed at raising awareness of officials at all levels on good sustainability practice for major sporting events. The project, staged jointly with the University of Cape Town, also included a manual for training volunteers.

According to a study by the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation, the Cup will have the largest carbon footprint of any major international event with a goal to be ‘climate neutral’. At over 896,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, this will be more than eight times as much as Germany 2006 – and that’s not including a further 1,856,000 tonnes from international travel.

South Africa’s local organising committee plans to support a number of accredited carbon offset schemes, from planting trees to subsidising solar water heaters for the poor. But it acknowledges that “given the magnitude of the emissions, it will be difficult to achieve total compensation”.

The World Cup may indeed be a triumph for South Africa, but on present evidence, most of the shots at green goals will slide wide.

Sheryl Ozinsky, former head of Cape Town Tourism, is a sustainability consultant advising on greening the World Cup.

14 December 2009

Sheryl Ozinsky