How sport can advance environmental efforts and human rights

Climate change is a human rights issue. This sentiment is embodied by the Centre for Sport and Human Rights (CSHR), which has begun to consider the impact on people and communities when implementing environmental sustainability initiatives and how more can be done to promote human rights in the context of climate action.

CSHR is a human rights organisation for the world of sport. As part of its new project Sport, Human Rights & Climate Action: Joining the Dots, CSHR is seeking to dive further into how it can work with stakeholders to pinpoint and mitigate the impact of sports on the planet and people, and how to leverage the platform of sports to champion climate action.

In 2021, CSHR set out a strategic plan – ‘Convergence 2025’ – explaining its mission to advance a world of sport that respects and promotes human rights by generating awareness, building capacity and delivering impact.

The Centre promotes collective action in enabling prevention of human rights violations linked to sport; engaging affected stakeholders; ensuring access to effective remedy for anyone harmed; and harnessing opportunities to promote human rights in sport.

One way in which CSHR supports organisations in considering human rights when developing and implementing strategies is through its Human Rights Playbook; just one of a number of tools that have been developed by the Centre in partnership with leading actors in sport.

“The idea of the Playbook is to provide a guidance document that is readily accessible, and is something that sports organisations and event organisers – irrespective of their size and geography – can use to create a human rights policy for themselves and embed human rights due diligence in their operations and events,” Shubham Jain, the Centre’s Education & Policy Researcher, tells Global Sustainable Sport.

Lucy Amis, Senior Advisor, Knowledge and Capacity, adds: “Many of the tools and trainings that we provide are designed to build capacity for the practical application and operationalisation of the UN Guiding Principles, which we and leading sports bodies see as an effective approach to integrating human rights across activities.”

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) are a set of guidelines for both states and commercial actors to identify, prevent, address and remedy human rights abuses.

Amis and Jain have recently been working on a Sport & Human Rights Glossary to address the differences in language and jargon associated with sport terminology and human rights strategies, creating a live tool that is easily digestible and aims to boost understanding among all audiences.

Interlinked

A common issue when efforts are made to incorporate climate action and human rights into the work of sports organisations is that they are typically split their efforts into two (or more) strategies that do not always work in tandem.

When the discussion of sustainability arises, it is often around the environmental aspect and not the other elements that create a healthy and positive setting for human beings to thrive. This is where the Centre is striving to encourage bringing positive human rights and climate action together.

“Within sports organisations, there are often sustainability departments and sometimes these include a human rights or anti-discrimination unit or department,” explains Amis.

“Too often they seem to operate separately, sometimes in silos and occasionally in conflict with each other. This approach is increasingly not viable. We do not have any time to waste from the climate point of view, but also from a people’s wellbeing perspective to keep these areas ring-fenced. Not only does it mean that there are missed opportunities, but it also means you’re not bringing all resources to bear to address the problem.”

Amis adds that frameworks are often available on the human rights side that could add value to the environmental side, and vice-versa.

“The Playbook, and all of our work, is very often underpinned by the UNGPs and a core, fundamental part of that is the need for stakeholder engagement,” says Amis.

“There is an urgent need to hear from people who are affected in all decision-making processes. But it’s more than that. I think what I’m seeing more and more is that on the non-environmental sustainability side, so if we take the social pillar or the governance pillar, there is not always a very clear way of structuring all the elements that relate to people’s dignity and wellbeing.

“There are different operational areas and terminologies that are widely used – in organisationslike diversity and inclusion, or ESG, or accessibility or EDI, for example. But very often these elements are disparate and don’t have a common or overarching coherent narrative.”

Amis continues: “We believe the human rights lens adds value, because it draws together all the elements that meaningfully benefit people under one umbrella, and crucially issupported and backed up by national and international laws and regulation, but it is also an approach of its own, a way of doing things that says: ‘Are you engaging with people? If so, are you hearing fromthe people affected and, importantly, from diverse groups of people? Do they have a voice in decisions that affect them? Are you being accountable to them? And do you have complaints and remedy systems if things go wrong in any of the areas where people are impacted?’.”

Jain adds: “We work with stakeholders across the Sports Ecosystem to support organisations with this. Our ‘Roadmap to Remedy’ project, for instance, involved consultation widely with a range of stakeholders on how sports can improve their responses to reports of abuse.”

There are specific sporting issues that arise as a result of climate change affecting human rights – and this can be felt across various aspects of sports from the building of stadia through to the environment needed to perform, from grassroots to elite level.

Amis explains that human rights should be considered across all aspects of a sporting event, from participating and watching, through to working at and on the spectacle. Many of these involve areas where people’s rightsare being impacted by the climate crisis, whether that’s the right to safe working or playing conditions for those operating in excessively high temperatures, or for athletes, such as skiers who are having to perform on icy or increasingly unsafe surfaces for example.

Human rights in sports can also relate to tournament safety, freedom from sexual abuse, the rights of athletes to enjoy the privacy regarding their own medical data, gender inclusion, right to housing and community life and more.

“We’re talking about everything that affects people,” says Amis.

CSHR is relatively new to researching climate change in relation to human rights.

Going forward, the Centre will look to research, support and learn more about how sport can support the development of climate action and human rights.

“One underpinning value that we have is co-creation. We want to talk to people who are most impacted and those who really have the knowledge and are experts on the ground to be able to find real, effective and meaningful solutions,” says Jain.

“We want to then take it forward and work with people who are actually impacted to understand how sport can be a sort of means, both in, through and around sport, in terms of promoting human rights and climate initiatives. Crucially we also need to work together with decisions makers – the organisations that are responsible for funding sport, formulating policies and implementing them – and get their buy-in and recognition that this has to be a shared effort.”

Images: Dorian Hurst on Unsplash, Miguel A Amutio on Unsplash, Daniel Bernard on Unsplash