Safeguarding the Winter Olympics-Paralympics against climate change

(Press-News.org) New research into the impact of climate change on snow sports provides recommendations to increase the climate-resilience of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

The University of Waterloo led the study, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Innsbruck and the University of Toronto, and it builds on their influential work to determine reliable locations for the Winter Games as global warming accelerates. The team analyzed the 93 potential host locations where the International Olympic Committee (IOC) indicated the necessary winter sports infrastructure was already in place. They found that if countries continue with current climate policies, only 52 would remain climate-reliable for the Olympics and 22 for the Paralympics.

“Climate change is altering the geography of where the Winter Olympics and Paralympics can be held. We have to prioritize solutions to the much greater risk facing the Paralympics and explore ways that the One Bid, One City partnership can survive in an era of climate change,” said Dr. Daniel Scott, professor in the Faculty of Environment at Waterloo and the lead author on the paper.

The researchers examined a range of climate change adaptation strategies. Merging the Olympics and Paralympics in February would be very difficult because of the sheer size of the combined Games and the complexity of holding nearly double the number of competitions. The team found that by shifting both the Olympic and Paralympic Games to earlier dates, the number of climate-reliable locations for the Paralympics would increase to 38.

“Our models show a big difference when both games are shifted forward by a few weeks so that the Paralympics begin in the last week of February,” said Dr. Robert Steiger, professor in the Department of Public Finance, University of Innsbruck. “This move is a very promising option to protect the fairness and safety for Paralympic athletes.”

The researchers also emphasized the importance of snowmaking as a climate-adaptation strategy and found that without it, the number of potential hosts declines to only four by the 2050s.

“There have been criticisms of the reliance on snowmaking in Beijing and other recent Games, but not employing it is no more an option than is moving hockey, figure skating, and curling back outside,” Scott said. “Abandoning snowmaking would result in a major increase in unfair and unsafe conditions for athletes, cancelled competitions, and eventually a Winter Games without any snow sports.”

The IOC’s Sustainability Agenda 2020+5 seeks to inspire and assist the development of sustainable sport worldwide and drive climate action that supports the Paris Climate Agreement. The accord’s goal is to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

“No sport can escape the impacts of climate change,” said Dr. Maleleine Orr, a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. “The world’s best athletes, who have dedicated their lives to sport, deserve nothing less than the best conditions that can be provided sustainably. The winter sport community must work together to find solutions to adapt to climate change and achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.”

The study, Advancing Climate Change Resilience of the Winter Olympic-Paralympic Games, appears in the journal Current Issues in Tourism. The IOC adopted recommendations from the team’s previous study,  entitled Climate change and the climate reliability of hosts in the second century of the Winter Olympic Games, which appears in the same journal.

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