Touting the carbon neutrality of the 2022 football World Cup without being able to demonstrate it is "unfair", said Wednesday the Swiss Commission for Loyalty (CSL), which "recommends" to FIFA to abandon this type of assertion in the future.
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The independent authority "approved the complaints" of environmental associations Notre affaire à tous (France), the Climate Alliance (Switzerland), Carbon Market Watch (Belgium), the New Weather Institute (Great Britain) and Fossil Free Football and Reclame Fossietvrij (Netherlands), in a decision taken on Monday and communicated on Wednesday.
A slap in the face for FIFA and a warning for Paris 2024
In practice, the CSL does not impose sanctions or impose a correction on the world football body, but its judgment is a slap in the face for FIFA's environmental communication. It is also a warning for that of the major sporting events to come, in particular the Paris 2024 Olympics, increasingly scrutinized on this subject.
The Swiss authority did not enter into the detailed environmental assessment of the Qatari tournament (20 November-18 December 2022), criticized for years because of its holding in an arid micro-state and lacking the required infrastructure, which therefore had to build seven of the eight stadiums used and air condition.
'Erroneous and misleading impression'
In a decision of much broader scope, the Swiss Commission for Loyalty recalls that there is currently "no generally accepted method" to estimate the carbon emissions of an event as well as to control their "offsetting" by the organizers - for example by tree plantations, the impact of which is scientifically discussed.
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Added to this is the fact that FIFA has not sufficiently clarified "the future process planned to be able to achieve climate neutrality later", giving "the erroneous and misleading impression" that the Qatari World Cup "would have already achieved climate neutrality or carbon neutrality before and during the tournament", continues the decision.
The Swiss authority considers that the football body should have "shown in a transparent manner" that a possible complete compensation of the broadcasts of the tournament could only be achieved "in the future, when concrete conditions are met", by providing "proof (...) credible" of the means used to achieve this objective.
"Recommendation subject to appeal," says FIFA
Contacted by AFP, FIFA said it was "analyzing the reasons for this recommendation, which remains subject to appeal", and said it was "fully aware that climate change is one of the most urgent challenges of our time", which "requires from each of us immediate and sustainable climate action".
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This is a very strong signal that is sent to the organizers of major international competitions, "says Jérémie Suissa, general delegate of Notre Affaire à tous, in a statement from the French association. "It is no longer possible to conceive of climate-absurd events while pretending to be carbon neutral."
The plaintiff organizations, which had launched their joint offensive in November 2022 in their respective countries before the procedure was consolidated in Switzerland, now plan to seize "other jurisdictions," the statement said.
