FIFA's climate strategy 3 years on
A review
This post is a bit of a departure from the usual newsletter post. It’s a long-read on a single theme. All feedback on the format and content is welcome. The next round-up of news and developments on football and climate issues will be on its way soon.
Fran
Introduction
FIFA is responsible for the most watched sporting tournament in the world, the men’s football World Cup. It is also the organiser of many other major global tournaments. The organisation’s reach is unique, with 211 affiliated member associations around the world. It expects its revenues for 2023-2026 to exceed $11bn. As the global governing body for football its decisions have profound direct and indirect impacts on football and beyond. Leadership by major non-state organisations such as FIFA is key to galvanising climate action. This makes it essential to look closely at FIFA’s work on climate issues. This extended note is aimed as a contribution to doing so. Further analysis by others would be welcome.
Summary
Three years ago, FIFA published the FIFA Climate Strategy. At the same time it said it would be a signatory to the United Nations Sports for Climate Action Framework. As part of that, FIFA committed to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2040.
This post reviews the progress made on these commitments and on its strategy. It also examines other key climate activities and developments related to FIFA over the last three years. It finds:
FIFA’s analysis of the impacts of climate change on football remains important. Recent extreme weather impacts on football highlight this. Further work is needed on impacts and responses in different parts of the world.
The FIFA Congress a month from now, on 11 December, plans to finalise who will host the 2030 and 2034 World Cups. Doing so would appear to mean FIFA will not meet its target of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030.
FIFA has not reported on the progress of the 18 initiatives in the FIFA Climate Strategy. An assessment of them can be based on publicly available information. This suggests 2 of the 18 initiatives have been delivered. 2 others show some progress, and there is no progress known on the other 14.
Looking at other actions by FIFA since the strategy shows a small number of practical activities taken forward. It also highlights important areas with a lack of clarity and other negative developments.
FIFA needs to reboot its approach. This should focus on a new ambitious strategy, delivery plans, and accelerated action.
The rest of this note is in five parts: 1) Climate Impacts on Football; 2) Football Impacts on Climate - Targets, data and progress 3) Actions and Initiatives in the Climate Strategy 4) Further actions and developments since the strategy 5) What next?
1. Climate impacts
The FIFA Climate Strategy includes a section on “The Impact of Climate Change on Football”. This notes that climate change is “reducing the amount of time that football can be played outdoors, making it less attractive to play in the open … risking heat exhaustion [and] impact injuries … damage [to] football infrastructures, reducing the availability of playing and training facilities … [and] eroding playing surfaces and other football facilities, adding further stress to the infrastructure”.
This will mean that “extreme and unseasonal weather events exposes match schedules to disruptions that can significantly impact the course of the tournament … [and] impact the performance of players and lessen the level of comfort for fans … [matches will] become less attractive for broadcasters and the global TV audience”.
FIFA also recognises the risk to its often stated goal of football uniting the world: “these changes threaten FIFA’s own mission to make football truly global … the changes to the environment are starting to impact the rights of everyone to have equal and inclusive access to sport”.
Three years on, this analysis is even more relevant as impacts on football have become more visible. Floods in Brazil led to the postponement of the league, with two of its biggest clubs forced out of their stadiums for months. At Copa America, players, officials and fans struggled in extreme heat. And in Europe, recent floods in Spain and Eastern Europe have seen significant disruptions to football. This newsletter has also highlighted impacts around the world from South East Asia to grassroots football in England.
Given these developments, further analysis of the recent and future impacts on football in different parts of the world, and the different responses needed in different places, feels essential. This does not need to be carried out by FIFA, but the findings may well have implications for it. It also leads to the question: Is FIFA doing enough to respond to the impacts it has already identified?
2. Football Impacts on Climate: Targets, data and progress
Targets
FIFA has a “commitment to reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2040”. They are a signatory to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework and UN Race to Zero campaign. As well as requiring targets that cover all greenhouse gas emissions, this includes a range of other important criteria, for instance on persuasion - aligning advocacy, policy and engagement with net zero goals.
No independent assessment has been made of FIFA’s targets. Submission of information by FIFA to expert independent organisations such as SBTI and/or CDP, would be a positive step forward. Many organisations already do this. Alongside this, more expert analysis of published information on FIFA’s net zero target could help too.
In the meantime, we can independently make use of a published methodology that sets out key criteria for a net zero target. It includes criteria on a detailed plan, reporting, use of carbon credits, and more. Looking at FIFA’s published information against these criteria suggests its targets are lacking in important respects. This appears to fit with analysis that says “omissions, caveats and distortions often mean a company’s commitment is far weaker than the headline target would indicate”. That said, further review of FIFA’s net zero targets by others would be useful to see.
Data
FIFA’s 2021 climate strategy said it will: “Develop a standardised greenhouse gas accounting methodology for FIFA tournaments and preliminary competitions”. Details are yet to emerge on this. In the meantime, we have some limited official data on FIFA tournament-related emissions. These mainly come from FIFA itself and also from the bidders and hosts of tournaments. It should however be noted that:
this data is only from the finals of tournaments. It does not cover the preliminary stages. It also doesn't cover the 20 plus other tournaments that FIFA organises, or FIFA’s yearly organisational emissions (e.g. from staff flying).
Independent assessments of emissions for the Qatar 2022 World Cup (for instance here and here) suggest the officially stated emissions do not accurately represent the tournament's actual footprint due to the calculation approaches, and will be higher.
It is unlikely that a standardised approach has been used between tournaments, making like-for-like comparisons tentative.
Progress
The only FIFA tournament for which we have figures over a significant period is the men's World Cup finals, which is at four year intervals. Official figures are summarised in the table here.
Here a change in the wording of FIFA’s bidding regulations is important to note. FIFA’s bidding requirements for World Cup 2026 required bidders submit an assessment that “shall include but not be limited to a carbon footprint”. Following this both competing 2026 bidders provided figures for the total expected tournament emissions. The environmental requirements in the bidding process for the Women’s World Cup Cup 2027 and the Men’s 2030 and 2034 World Cups, did not explicitly require including a carbon footprint. Bidders must provide a “summary of the environmental and climate impact[s]” and mitigations in key areas.
A quantified carbon footprint assessment has been included in the joint Morocco, Portugal and Spain 2030 bid book. By contrast, the 2030 joint bid book from Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, the 2034 bid book from Saudi Arabia, and the bid books for the Women’s World Cup 2027, contain a narrative on impacts, but no carbon footprint figures for the tournaments. This change in the bidding requirements makes public understanding of FIFA tournament emissions, and progress on its targets, more difficult. The next sections take an initial look at the figures we have for upcoming men’s World Cups. Further expert insights on them would be welcome.
2026
Emissions figures of 3.7m tCO2e for the 2026 World Cup were included in an Environmental Impact Assessment document. This was produced by an independent organisation and included as a stand alone document in the official bid.
Since the report was published the number of games in the tournament has been increased from 80 to 104 (+30%). This means, all other things being equal, tournament emissions will be even higher. A sustainability strategy for this tournament was due to be published in 2023, but is yet to appear. Based on the emissions estimate in the 2026 bid document and official figures from previous World Cups, the 2026 World Cup is set to become the most polluting World Cup yet (though independent assessments have calculated World Cup 2022 emissions to be higher than officially stated, and figures for this tournament will be higher too due to extra games).
2030
The bid book for Morocco, Portugal and Spain states a figure of 3.5m tCO2e for the tournament. The bid book references an unpublished Carbon Footprint Assessment Report as informing this. As noted above these figures appear not to include the part of the tournament in South America. This would make the overall figure higher, by how much is unclear.
2030 is also the date by which FIFA committed to cut emissions by 50%. No baseline year has been provided to measure this reduction against. But, with emissions put at 3.5m tCO2e (before factoring in the part of the tournament in South America), it seems very clear that emissions will not reduce by 50% by 2030 from any previous World Cups.
2034
Looking longer term at the 2034 World Cup bid from Saudi Arabia, as noted above, no emissions figures for the tournament have been provided in the bid. Looking at just a couple of aspects of the bid, 11 new stadiums are expected to be built, and there will also be significant travel distances between some venues. These are just two, albeit big, factors that go into contributing to overall tournament emissions. By 2034 FIFA’s emissions should have reduced further beyond the 50% reduction of its 2030 target. From what we know about this bid, this seems unlikely.
Emissions for the tournament could be higher or lower than other World Cups. A requirement by FIFA for publication of official estimates of tournament emissions of all its tournaments could clear this up. As it stands, a decision was taken to host the Women’s World Cup 2027 in Brazil without knowing the carbon footprint of any bidders proposals. It now appears that the hosting decision for the 2034 World Cup will be taken without any published data on the carbon footprint of that tournament, and decisions for 2030 based on partial information.
2030 and 2034. FIFA Assessments
FIFA will undertake, and should publish, ‘bid evaluation reports’ of the 2030 and 2034 bids shortly ahead of the FIFA Congress in December. If this evaluation process follows the format of the bid evaluations for the Women’s World Cup 2027 it will include: a summary of the bidders own plans, a single paragraph evaluation of them, and a brief risk assessment (high/medium/low). This will be against three criteria: sustainability; human rights; and environmental protection. As emissions reporting and targets are not in the criteria, bids will not be assessed against these.
FIFA’s other tournaments
This analysis only looks at FIFA Men’s World Cup data on emissions. It does not look at the many other FIFA tournaments. However its other tournaments are also expanding in number and scale - for instance the Men’s Club World Cup 2025 for which there has been no environmental impact assessment.
This means it is a fair starting assumption that there will be no emissions reductions from FIFA’s other tournaments to counterbalance any lack of progress on reducing Men’s World Cup emissions. In fact, its entirely possible that emissions from these tournaments are going up. This would make the challenge for FIFA in reducing emissions even more difficult.
Section summary
This section has not looked at the other environmental-related activities for World Cups, as the focus here is on the headline emissions-reduction target FIFA has committed to. Further reviews of these other environmental aspects of bids would be welcome to see.
The decision to finalise the 2030 and 2034 World Cup hosts is planned to take place at FIFA Congress in December. Doing so, this analysis suggests, would mean FIFA will miss its 2030 target of reducing emissions by 50%, and also leave it even more off track by 2034.
3. Initiatives and Actions in the Climate Strategy
FIFA’s Climate Strategy included 18 initiatives. These are presented in the document within three goals and also support four ‘pillars’. Timescales for the initiatives are not stated. Also, the dates for the other actions in the document do not go beyond 2023. This raises an important initial question: what is FIFA’s climate strategy for 2024 onwards?
Initiatives
One of the 18 initiatives is to “Publish a bi-annual FIFA Climate Report to disclose FIFA’s progress and the global situation in football”. Three years on no report has been published1. This leaves a significant lack of clarity on the status of the strategy, progress on it, and plans going forward. Moving forward, more transparency and communication from FIFA on its progress on climate work would be welcome.
In the absence of information from FIFA, this section takes a look at what progress we know of on the initiatives and actions in the 2021 strategy. To do so, this reviewer looked at FIFA official documents, media releases and other information published by FIFA. Alongside this, a wider web search was carried out. The findings are in the table below. Where there has been action on an initiative, no assessment is made here of the quality of the end result.
In summary, the table shows that two of the initiatives appear to have been completed, and two others appear to show progress though require further reporting. No information could be found for the 14 other initiatives. This means no information could be found on any progress on important initiatives in the strategy such as:
Review concepts, requirements, agreements and regulations for FIFA tournaments and events to adapt them to climate change impacts and to reduce their associated carbon emissions
Develop a standardised greenhouse gas accounting methodology for FIFA tournaments and preliminary competitions
Carry out a global survey and research to estimate the greenhouse gas emission of football globally and determine the current extent of the impact of climate change on football across the world
Publish a bi-annual FIFA Climate Report to disclose FIFA’s progress and the global situation in football
Other actions in the strategy
Aside from these 18 initiatives, the strategy also includes a further six actions to be completed in 2022, and four to be completed in 2023. The 2022 actions are in relation to World Cup 2022 and all appear complete. For the 2023 actions, three of the four reports due to be published in that year are still yet to appear. Two of these are follow-ups to the World Cup 2022 and the other is the sustainability strategy for the World Cup 2026.
Publication of these reports should be seen as important, not only for understanding the sustainability work for those World Cups, but also for informing hosting decisions for 2030 and 2034 and the climate actions in relation to them. Overall, this review shows a poor level of publicly reported progress on the climate initiatives that FIFA set out to achieve in 2021. What about progress on other fronts not covered in the strategy?
4. Further actions and developments since the Strategy
FIFA’s strategic objectives for the global game: 2023-2027 include 11 goals. One of these is a “Focus on social responsibilities, in particular human rights and climate-related aspects.” As part of this FIFA says in a further paragraph that it will “continue to play a leading role in climate action by engaging actively and collectively in the journey to net zero”. No further detail on any new or different actions to support this has been provided yet.
Separately, FIFA’s latest Annual Report highlights three environmental actions in the year gone. These cover green stadium certification at the Women's World Cup, an update to its 2021 sustainable sourcing code, and an event at the European Parliament. While this example of engagement is good to see, there has been minimal communication on the public engagement by the FIFA sustainability team in recent years. For instance, FIFA’s last report on public engagement by its Head of Sustainability is from over a year ago.
Looking at budgets, the latest Annual Report says that FIFA is “on track to reach its budgeted total revenue of USD 11,000 million for the 2023-2026 cycle”. Clearly, spending by FIFA on environmental-related football projects could make a significant contribution to responses to climate challenges. FIFA’s spending is reported against eight categories that do not include sustainability, and FIFA’s most recent funding report includes only passing ad-hoc references related to a handful of projects with environmental aspects. This means it is not possible to establish what FIFA-funded projects have an environmental component, the amounts provided, the hoped for outcomes, and whether this funding is enough.
A new story on FIFA’s website looks at “Latin America's first green project supported by the FIFA Forward programme”. This suggests funding so far to green projects may be limited, though maybe this is not representative of other regions and/or the start of a pipeline of more. Separately, a new independent report on FIFA has stated, “funds are not linked to each association’s development needs”. This leaves open important questions related to climate justice in FIFA’s work.
Moving on to look at governance issues, there is no indication of FIFA Council or Congress discussing climate issues. Separately, There is a ‘Human Rights and Sustainability’ Sub-Committee of the Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee. However, no members are listed, and no meetings are known to have taken place.
Looking at FIFA’s media releases on sustainability and the FIFA President’s social media, we see a small number of individual initiatives mentioned over the last 3 years related to sustainability. These are to be welcomed. At the same time it’s also possible to suggest that FIFA’s platform provides a unique opportunity to win over hearts and minds, that there is opportunity to do more, and it is currently being under-utilised.
In addition, there have also been some important external developments that have gained significant global news attention. For instance, FIFA was adjudged to have 'made false statements' about a carbon-neutral World Cup 2022 tournament. Elsewhere, FIFA announced a partnership with oil company Aramco. In recent weeks, news that over 100 women footballers have urged FIFA to end the deal also went global. Separately, the Head of the UN has said fossil fuel industries should be banned from advertising.
Finally, concerns are being expressed about the results of an ongoing FIFA review of whether competitive domestic league games can be played overseas. The review was not tasked to include environmental issues as a factor. The outcomes could lead to more long-distance travel by teams and fans.
Overall, this section shows that a small number of practical activities have been taken forward. However, looking at governance, funding and communication issues, shows important areas where there is a lack of clarity and progress. Alongside this are important developments that have gained negative attention for FIFA in relation to its climate credentials.
5. What next?
The above analysis suggests that FIFA appears set not to meet its 2030 emissions target, has not yet delivered on its 2021 climate strategy commitments, and other actions are falling short.
This takes place against a backdrop where there are calls for countries and companies to go further urgently on their climate ambition. It's also against a backdrop where some other key sports organisations appear to be paying more attention to climate issues than FIFA. See for instance, UEFA or the Olympics. In addition, it takes place in the context of a call for wider reforms of FIFA. On top of this, the post has also not touched on wider political, economic and social developments and how these have and will influence progress.
These are just some of the important trends and issues that deserve more attention to help further understand FIFA’s approach and progress, and the responses needed. In addition, this post has not attempted to look at actions of continental or national bodies, or professional or grassroots football clubs, or fans and other football stakeholders. Also, new global coalitions and collaborations, centred on football and sport, but not focused around FIFA, are potentially emerging. Plenty is happening that is not within FIFA’s orbit, and more can happen, regardless of the progress FIFA makes. At the same time, progress by FIFA is a key piece in the overall picture.
This post clearly suggests that more action is needed by FIFA. Any new individual initiatives it carries out will not in themselves meet the scale of the challenge. FIFA needs to reboot its whole approach, putting a new, more ambitious and holistic strategy in place, including measures on governance, transparency, communications, and funding - and getting on with the supporting actions urgently.
Given FIFA’s global recognition it should be an opportunity to do so in collaboration with world-leading organisations and experts. This could include building on its existing partnerships and extending these to climate issues, for instance with the World Health Organization. Leadership will also be essential. This note goes out with COP29 talks underway, and to which the FIFA President paid a short flying visit announcing the continuation of a regional partnership. Three years since the FIFA Climate Strategy was launched at COP26 it could have been a first opportunity for FIFA to signal a new and more ambitious strategic approach globally, and at the very least report on progress on its 2021 Climate Strategy.
In line with taking a new approach, as previously suggested in this newsletter, one approach to World Cup 2030 and 2034 hosting decisions would be to put these on hold for now. While that is happening, FIFA could undertake a detailed review of the “concepts, requirements, agreements and regulations for FIFA tournaments” (an initiative stated in the climate strategy). The postponement on Winter Olympics hosting decisions provides some parallels. That said, recent news reports suggest this is highly unlikely as FIFA is set to nod through hosting decisions.
Based on the analysis in this post, further ambitious action by FIFA is urgently needed, and it is important for people and organisations to make the case for this. It also leads to a final question: what are the best next steps people and organisations can take to support that?
As ever, comments, corrections, suggestions for future content, and proposals for guest posts are all welcome.
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
footballandclimatechange@gmail.com
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The only reporting by FIFA on its climate work has been one-off minimal self-reporting to the UN in response to a standard survey. This does not address progress on its strategy or “the global situation in football”, and only covers scope 1 and 2 emissions, which it says have stayed the same between 2021 and 2022, though no figures are provided.