IOC’s Climate Action Awards celebrate strides made by NOCs, IFs and athletes

Supported by Olympic and Paralympic partner Deloitte, the IOC Climate Action Awards were established to encourage, recognise and reward projects from National Olympic Committees (NOCs), International Federations (IFs) and athletes aimed at reducing the environmental impact of sport.

This year’s finalists in the NOC  category include: Comité Olímpico de Chile, Hellenic Olympic Committee, Mauritius National Committee, Comité Olímpico Español and Swiss Olympic.

Comité Olímpico de Chile implemented a comprehensive sustainability strategy that focussed on reducing carbon footprint, while the Hellenic Olympic Committee also introduced a clear carbon reduction strategy.

The Mauritius National Committee developed a comprehensive carbon footprint reduction plan focussing on travel and procurement, and Comité Olímpico Español collected 4,500kg of old sports clothing to manufacture Spanish glasses needed for the Olympic Games in Paris. Swiss Olympic not only created a plan to minimise its own emissions, but also provided funds to its national federations, their clubs and partner organisations through the ‘Swiss Olympic Climate Fund’.

In the IF category, the finalists included: the International Biathlon Union (IBU), International Canoe Federation (ICF), the International Hockey Federation (FIH), World Rowing and World Rugby.

The IBU worked with TV broadcasters in collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union to measure their carbon footprint during the 2023-24 World Cup season, and the ICF created – along with the Italian Canoe Federation – a programme titled ‘Developing Environmental Circular Knowledge’.

FIH worked with the artificial turf industry to develop a new technology called Dry Turf, which reduces the amount of water needed for hockey pitches. This helped to achieve a 40% reduction from London 2012 to Tokyo 2020, and is predicted to reach a further 30% reduction. The aim is to replace 2,000 water-based artificial hockey pitches globally, saving approximately 7.6 billion litres of water per year.

World Rowing, which was one of the first signatories of both the Sports for Climate Action and Sports for Nature Frameworks, has also partnered with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) for a number of years.

Elsewhere, World Rugby collaborated with its partners to develop a Carbon Emissions Reporting Tool (CERT). This enabled the forecasting and measurement of emissions across events.

Athletes have also been nominated, including the USA’s Christopher Blevins, Great Britain’s Imogen Grant, Bulgaria’s Lina Taylor, and Marion Thenault and Oliver Scholfield of Canada.

The names of the winners will be announced during UN Climate Week between September 22-29.

Image: Xavier Praillet on Unsplash