Environmental and climate change are placing our planet and future generations at risk. Meeting the scale of the challenge requires action In this context, football, the world’s most popular sport, is one of the few cultural forces strong enough to help shift society towards a more sustainable future for all.
The Common Goal movement mobilises its forces, community and expertise to encourage football to take ownership of environmental challenges and inspire radical changes. . To this end, we promote and embrace all initiatives and guidelines supporting the same target, and in particular an engagement of the industry to join the supporting UNFCCC Sports for Climate Action Framework and address the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN.
We have set a dynamic strategy across three main areas:
- Change the game (Football Industry) - Accelerate football’s commitment and actions
- Inspire the world (Fans and Citizens) - Promote responsible behaviour and inspire society to take action
- Transform Communities (Football for good sector) - Create pathways to environmental progress and enable positive environmental impact on the communities with long term development opportunities
The journey towards environmental sustainability requires empowered stakeholders, commitment, strong choices, resources, capacity, and radical collaborations.
Taking responsibility to answer global challenges and protect the value of footballFootball’s impact on the environment is complex and can be difficult to measure. However, the industry’s contribution to climate change and environmental damage – through associated travel, use of energy and resources, construction, land use, use of pesticides, waste production, catering, sportswear production, etc. is a reality.
Climate change is also increasingly impacting football through infrastructure damage, cancellation of games, changes of timing, player’s performances and injuries, damaged fan experiences because of heatwaves, unseasonal rainfall, storms, droughts, extreme temperatures, etc. Water scarcity, local pollutions and energy shortages can also be factors.
The industry needs to accelerate and intensify its efforts and investments to respond to the challenges of environmental sustainability in tangible ways. The sustainability of the business models in place at the moment is at stake.
Bringing social and environmental changes at the community levelUnderserved communities are among the most impacted and vulnerable when it comes to climate change. There is an urgent need to answer these challenges while creating pathways towards environmental progress that also look at the intersection of social and financial sustainability.