Dirty Games? Rio’s Olympic-sized challenge
The Rio Olympic Games might seem one of the most troubled yet, but it’s easy to forget how dogged by controversy each Games is. Ever since Sydney in 2000, each Olympics has promised to be the greenest games ever. But Athens in 2004 fell far short of its green energy targets and then many of its costly facilities rapidly fell into disuse and disrepair. Even to meet the clean air standards necessary for athletes to compete safely, at Beijing in 2008, the Chinese authorities had to close roads and factories, so bad was the pollution. Certain recognised environmental standards for sourcing construction materials were also missing.
The London Olympics in 2012 also missed its targets for powering the games with clean, renewable energy, and were criticised for using the questionable conservation strategy of ‘biodiversity offsetting’ – creating new areas elsewhere to move threatened species to) to make up for the impact of construction on local wildlife. Targets for engaging more young people in sport as part of the promised legacy were also missed. Other controversies raged over sponsorship from certain multinational corporations like Dow Chemicals, still embroiled in the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster, and the oil company BP, bizarrely a ‘sustainability partner’, just two years after being involved in one of the world’s worst pollution incidents at its Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Sponsorship from junk food brands McDonalds and Coke also drew criticism for an event devoted to sport and health.
There is nothing unique about the Rio Olympics experiencing problems, so much money spent on a brief two weeks of elite competition, in a country weighed scarred by inequality is bound to cause unrest. But it goes further in Brazil. Research by the campaign group Global Witness shows it to be the most dangerous country in the world to be an environmentalist. Since the London Olympics four years ago at least 150 campaigners have been murdered for defending their land, forests and rivers. At the same time several of the countries competing at the Rio games buy timber from Brazil, 80% of which is thought to be traded illegally. Elsewhere, a promised clean-up of the water flowing into the Guanabara Olympic sailing area didn’t happen, only a fraction of the promised tree planting programme materialised, and building the Olympic golf course proved so unpopular with local people that it spawned its own ‘occupy’ protest movement.
The rhetoric of the Olympics emphasises a positive, broad based legacy of new infrastructure, community level engagement in sport and familial, international togetherness. It goes to show that a huge amount remains to be done to rebalance the Olympic movement away from its capture by corporate sponsorship and the worship of a thin tier of elite sporting activity that fails to translate into improved access to, and conditions for sport to inspire and engage the young.
Click here to listen to the radio discussion on the BBC World Business Report