News article
Snowsports’ out-of-this-world bid for environmental sustainability
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) will be able to benefit from technology to improve its efforts in environmental sustainability, thanks to a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the Business Applications and Space Solutions.
FIS and ESA signed a Memorandum of Intent focused on the development and implementation of space applications to enable innovation towards preventing deforestation, fighting climate change, protecting biodiversity, reducing pollution and carbon emissions, and growing the circular economy.
The collaboration comes ahead of the launch of the ESA’s ‘Space for Sustainability in Sports and Mass Events’ funding opportunity, which will open on January 31, 2025.
“Issues like the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity do not pertain to any specific area of society."
Additionally, the Memorandum of Intent anticipates the potential implementation of space applications to address future common topics of interest, such as athlete performance, safety and security around events, and recreational snowsports experiences.
“Issues like the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity do not pertain to any specific area of society: they are the fundamental challenge of our lifetime, for all of us, and can only be addressed through collective effort,” said FIS Sustainability Director, Susanna Sieff.
“This is our reasoning when entering a partnership like this with ESA, which brings the highest level of human knowledge and technology to our common mission of making the world – and snow sports, for that matter – much more sustainable.”
Image: Maarten Duineveld on Unsplash