By Anton Cartwright
A number of recent reports have drawn attention to the carbon footprint generated by the Fifa 2010 World Cup. The storyline involves the estimated 2,7 million additional tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) greenhouse gases that will result from hosting the mega-event. 2,7 million is a big number. Comparing equivalent activities, the South African World Cup is forecast to be over eight times more carbon intensive than the preceding event in Germany. But 2,7 million tonnes of greenhouse gas is also less than 0,7% of the emissions that South Africa is responsible for every year. As with all climate change analysis, insight and perspective can be of great assistance particularly if, as appears to be the case in the reportage, this information is going to be used to formulate an opinion on the merits of hosting the World Cup in South Africa.
Calculations of carbon footprints, especially when conducted ex ante for complex and unprecedented events, are always assumption dependent. As a result, the numbers produced by such estimates are at best indicative; they serve as a reference point on the scale of the problem and a guide for remedial actions. Any carbon footprint can be contested: Would the lights in a hotel have been on anyway even if World Cup tourists had not been there? Should one include the affects of water vapour emitted by aeroplanes given that this vapour does trap heat in the atmosphere but does not hang around in the atmosphere very long? How many locals will not be commuting or holidaying as a result of the World Cup congestion? These are difficult questions to answer definitively, although accepted norms around these issues are becoming more common place. As calculations go, the forecast of 2,7 million CO2-e produced by Randall Spalding-Fecher (an experienced and respected figure in South Africa’s climate change sector) and others from Econ Pöyry in February 2009 were about as comprehensive and balanced as anyone could have hoped for. The study disaggregated emissions for six different event-related activities, clearly stated its assumptions and applied internationally accepted conventions in arriving at its estimates. In many ways South Africa, and the Norwegian Government that sponsored the study, should be commended for conducting such a thorough first step. In particular they should be commended for being the first mega-event to include international travel to and from the event in their analysis. In the South African study international travel accounts for over 67% of all emissions, and including this source makes for a more comprehensive footprint calculation. It also raises important awareness around the climate change impact of economic and lifestyle decisions. The other reported contributors were inter-city transport (17,6%), intra-city transport (1,4 %), stadia constructions and material (0,6%), stadia and precinct energy use (0,5%) and energy use in accommodation (12,4%).
Even if international travel is ignored, however, the South African World Cup appears set to emit significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than Germany did in 2006 or, on an intensity basis, any preceding Olympic Games or Football World Cup. Is this the fault of the World Cup? Is it another reason for Afro-sceptics to question the rationale of hosting such an event in South Africa? To answer these questions it is necessary to look beyond the World Cup to the way in which South Africa generates its electricity, moves its people and goods between and within cities and constructs its infrastructure. Indeed, it is necessary to delve into the entire macro-economic premise of South Africa’s efforts to address the social and material injustices of its past.
During apartheid South Africa relied heavily on a minerals and energy complex to sustain its economy in the face of growing isolation. As a part of this strategy the country exploited its abundant but dirty coal resources to provide cheap energy to its mines. It also developed industrial giants such as SASOL to synthesises oil from coal. SASOL ensured the apartheid government a measure of oil independence but simultaneously became responsible for the world’s biggest point-source of greenhouse gas pollution at Secunda. South Africa’s first democratic government set out to redress this situation with the intention of diversifying energy sources and managing environmental impacts but was soon won over by vested interests in the status quo. As a result the country continues to operate one of the most greenhouse gas intensive economies in the world.
To blame the World Cup for a large carbon footprint is to miss the point that it is the underlying nature of South Africa’s unreconstructed energy and transport sectors together with its remoteness from most internationally travelling football fans that generates this footprint. Frankly, relative to most other countries, hosting a flea market in South Africa would be bad for the environment. There could be no other way but for a World Cup in South Africa to have a massive footprint, and to blame the event for this is to confuse symptoms with causes. It is to the causes of this footprint that we should be casting our attention and focusing remedial actions.
Did Fifa appreciate that awarding the 2010 World Cup to South Africa would result in such a large emissions footprint? Surely. And in that sense Fifa, which is set to generate over €3bn in profits from 2010, could take some responsibility for the carbon footprint of an event that it manages on a very short string. This is particularly true given Fifa’s insistence that South Africa build five new and large stadia and the emissions that arise from the cement, iron and steel used in the construction of these stadia (on this component I believe Econ Pöyrys estimate to be too conservative). From a climate change perspective, an ideal world would involve rhetoric on the problem being matched by decisions to award mega-events to those countries that have the lowest greenhouse gas intensity in their national energy grids and built environments?
But the Realpolitik of international football is far from ideal and not yet guided by climate change considerations. Competitive advantage in hosting mega-events is not, for the time being, determined by the relative carbon intensity of the aspirant hosts’ economies. Instead Fifa, in acknowledgement of climate change issues, encourages host countries to offset some of their carbon emissions in climate change mitigation projects. Significantly, Fifa does not enter into binding agreements with host countries on these offsets in the same way that it does on matters of security, stadia and hospitality, but Fifa did offset its internal carbon footprint arising from Germany 2006 through a carbon mitigation project in Letaba, South Africa.
Assuming that South Africa responds to Fifa’s encouragement and precedent on carbon footprints, the comprehensive estimation that has been completed represents a necessary and positive first step in a process that involves reducing this footprint via the carbon offset market. It is in taking this subsequent step of reducing its 2010 footprint that South Africa has fallen short, and more critically passed up a golden opportunity. Carbon offsets involve transactions in which polluters invest in projects that reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions in exchange for the right to claim some credit against their own footprint. Collectively these transactions – which can be formal or informal – constitute the carbon market, a market that had a total value of over €90bn in 2008. South Africa is not yet a significant player in this market, either as an investor or as a beneficiary of investment, but this is changing. The cost of a tonne of CO2 credit in the offset market varies, but if it would cost roughly €20m to address the entire carbon footprint of the 2010 World Cup.
Whether spectators, Fifa, South Africa or commercial sponsors, should foot this bill might be contested, and there is a reasonable case for sharing the responsibility, but from a South African perspective not taking responsibility for this offset represents a lack of strategic foresight. €20m is a lot of money, but is a fraction of the cost of the cheapest new stadium in South Africa and manageable within the €3bn budget that has been allocated to the 2010 World Cup by South Africa. South Africa could purchase these credits and either retire them themselves or sell them to its 2010 partners including Fifa. Were South Africa to do this it would hold the legitimate claim of having hosted the first carbon neutral mega-event, a status that would automatically and instantaneously see it reposition itself from climate change laggard to climate change pioneer. It would also have set a watershed precedent for future events thereby ensuring a positive legacy for the 2010 World Cup even before it had started.
The money from this offset would be reinvested. As the purchaser, South Africa would be in a position to stipulate the location and the type of projects from which it would like to procure its carbon credits and in so doing could ensure that its investment remained domestic, or in keeping with the original intention to host an “African event”, on the continent. As the purchaser, South Africa could also ensure that the investment remained aligned to local needs. In so doing South Africa would kick-start a vibrant local carbon trading industry and support suppliers and adopters of exactly the type of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies that would allow the country to embark on a more sustainable industrial development pathway; one capable of serving the country’s economy and society well in a future in which climate change will become a growing concern.
Such an approach would accord with contemporary research findings on how hosts extract local development value from mega-events. The central strand of this research suggests that ensuring mega-events address local priorities while still meeting the demands of umbrella organisations, such as Fifa, is critical. Certainty this approach was central to Barcelona’s successful hosting of the 1992 Olympics and Germany’s hosting of the 2006 Football World Cup, and absent from the less economically successful Athens Olympics and Japanese and South Korean 2002 World Cup.
Importantly, projects do not have to exist or have been completed for an investor to purchase a credit. It is possible to purchase carbon credits “forward”, although obviously risk is reduced when credits have been completed or are near completion. It would be legitimate for South Africa to offset the 2010 World Cup in lieu of projects that are yet to be completed, or to initiate projects specially for the purpose of offsets.
There has, unfortunately, been inadequate public appreciation in South Africa of quite what an international marketing opportunity the tackling the 2010 carbon footprint presents. In the light of the guaranteed benefits, €20m (and it could be less) would represent money extremely well invested, but indications are that this transaction will not take place prior to the event. It is possible to offset the World Cup after the event, but doing this foregoes the obvious marketing platform that the run-up and actual event presents.
Late in 2009 the then Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism issued a tender for an organisation and projects that could offset the air-travel component of the World Cup and subsequent events, but then failed to award a contract. Instead host cities appear to have been left with the responsibility of scoring “Green Goals” and with a few exceptions have been as successful as the national soccer team has been in scoring actual goals in their warm up games. Most “Green Goal” attempts have focussed on the planting of trees. Trees do sequestrate CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow and do offer other potential benefits – shade, food and fodder, building material, fuel, better water infiltration and the type of habitat diversity that can support biodiversity. As a means of off-setting the greenhouse gases arising from a Football World Cup they are quite limited, however. Not only is an extraordinary number of trees required to offset 2,7 million tonnes of CO2, but establishing exactly how many are needed can be very difficult. Moreover, trees eventually die, releasing most of their CO2 back into the air as they decay, and there is concern that trees may prove a highly labile lock-up for atmospheric greenhouse gases as temperatures increase. Simply put, while planting some trees in the wake of the 2010 World Cup is a good idea, trying to mopvup all emissions derived from coal and oil combustion in forests not only represents a very expensive idea, but is also highly risky and probably ill-founded. It makes more sense to use offset investments in a range of projects involving solar water heaters, solar panels, wind turbines and energy efficient buildings and public transport, all of which offer social benefits of their own.
How did South Africa come to miss the offset opportunity created by the hosting of the 2010 World Cup? On the surface the answer relates to a lack of public awareness and institutional capacity to identify and seize a climate change opportunity, but this situation has its origins in a mindset that relies on heavy industrial sectors for economic development in spite of the clear limitations of these sectors in creating employment or redistributing wealth. The same mindset does not consider environmental costs to be real costs, in spite of the fact that they are borne disproportionately by the poor, and fails to connect environmental degradation (including climate change) with the continuing poverty of South Africa’s most marginalised people.
This mindset is pervasive within government, but also exists in many sectors of South African society. It relies on a notion of the environment as a luxury good, a white man’s construct, a place that rich people visit in 4x4 vehicles, a place that should be conserved once, and only once, we have taken care of human needs. In contrast the reality is that it is the environment that provides the water, air, fuel, food and even stability that sustains us, it is the environment that houses much of our culture, heritage and spirituality and it is the environment that when compromised produces outbreaks of the diseases that afflict us. Perhaps most crucially it is the environment that provides both the foundation as well as the means and inspiration with which people can escape deprivation. How we choose to manage and interact with this environment constitutes the foundation of our macroeconomic strategy.
All may not yet be lost. Although the opportunity has been missed to bandstand in front of a global audience at the 2010 kickoff as the hosts of the first carbon neutral mega-event, it is possible to offset an event ex-post. Climate change is not going away and scrutiny will be cast on South Africa before, during and after the 2010 Fifa World Cup. The country could yet, in its own way and own time, offset all or a portion of the carbon footprint generated by the event. In so doing it would reap the economic and developmental rewards associated with the nascent global renewable energy sector. It would also make a small but significant contribution towards curbing climate change and ensure a famous, if slightly delayed, legacy for the 2010 World Cup.
In the mean time observers need to appreciate that the large footprint that results from the 2010 World Cup, is not so much the event’s fault as a symptom of the way in which South Africa provides electricity and transport, and the distance between the country and most travelling football fans not to mention the distance between stadia. Criticism of the footprint should look to Fifa’s decision to award the event to a greenhouse gas intensive host, and encourage Fifa to consider emissions more seriously in future decisions as a means of incentivising the uptake of renewable energy among aspirant hosts. With regards to South Africa, the focus should be on what, at this late stage, can be done to offset the massive footprint through projects and technologies that will reduce the country’s emissions and tackle poverty. That, surely, is the way to secure a legacy for 2010 that will be celebrated for generations to come.