We need an environment-friendly World Cup

Football star and climate advocate Sofie Junge Pedersen is spearheading a global climate campaign with broad support from teammates from the Danish national football team at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

The campaign encourages all players who will play at the World Cup, which kicked off yesterday,  to offset the emissions generated by their air travel by donating to DanChurchAid’s work to mitigate climate change effects in Uganda or to Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Australia and New Zealand.

The campaign is the biggest player-led climate initiative in the history of football and Ms Pedersen, a midfielder on the Danish national team and Inter Milan, and climate advocate for DanChurchAid, has launched the initiative with the support of Football for Future (www.footballforfuture.org) and Common Goal (www.common-goal.org).
 Canada’s Jessie Flemming (Chelsea) and Italy’s Elene Linari (Roma) have also joined the campaign.

“Football players travel worldwide for matches and tournaments, inevitably contributing to greenhouse gas emissions in the absence of sustainable aviation solutions. While offsetting our air travel is one step towards taking responsibility, we must also strive to reduce our overall CO2 emissions and lead by inspiring the 3.5 billion football fans around the world to prioritise the climate,” Ms Pedersen said.

She added:“I encourage my football colleagues to take responsibility for their CO2 emissions. We can’t play if it’s 50 degrees centigrade or the pitches are underwater. But the hardest hit are developing countries, which have the smallest share of emissions. They experience droughts and floods, their crops die, and millions of people go without food. That is unfair.”

The initiative encourages World Cup players to take climate responsibility for their flights to Australia and New Zealand through DanChurchAid’s climate work in Uganda or through WWF’s work in the WWC-host nations Australia and New Zealand.

Through a climate contract with DanChurchAid, the football players support people and communities in developing countries that are hardest hit by climate change. This is done through a range of activities that benefit the climate globally and agricultural communities in Uganda locally, including tree planting in fields, gardens, and windbreaks as well as climate adaptation activities, the use of new climate-resilient crops, and investments in climate innovation.

While understanding that donating to climate resilience, carbon offsetting, and adaptation initiatives do not solve the climate crisis, the campaign recognises that these are short-term tools to compensate for players’ flights to and from the World Cup.
 
Does football pollute?
It is estimated that the global football industry produces more than 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, which is about the same size as the total emissions of Denmark. (2021), according to Carbon Literacy Trust (www.carbonliteracy.com).
Meanwhile, DanChurchAid has welcomed the footballers’ climate initiative.

“We are full of admiration for our climate advocate Sofie Junge Pedersen and for all the footballers who are putting the climate and the world’s poorest on the agenda at the World Cup. Carbon offsetting and tree planting are only part of the green transition of the world. But with this initiative, the Danish footballers show climate responsibility and act as role models for future sportswomen - and men of the world,” says Ms Birgitte Qvist-Sørensen, Secretary General of DanChurchAid.
   
 DanChurchAid