Sport and the Environment: Speaker Series Co-Hosted by the CSS and Brock’s Centre for Sport Capacity

Sport & The Environment: Politics, Practices and Preferred Futures

The University of British Columbia’s Centre for Sport and Sustainability and Brock University’s Centre for Sport Capacity have partnered to host a speaker series entitled Sport & The Environment: Politics, Practices and Preferred Futures!

The climate emergency has come starkly into focus. Wildfires, flooding, and extreme heat have made news headlines in recent years with alarming frequency. There is widespread concern that fast-approaching environmental ‘tipping points’ could have large-scale, irreversible impacts.

Against this backdrop, sport demonstrates how taken-for-granted parts of life might be disrupted as climate change progresses. The potential impacts of the environment on sport include temperatures too hot for exercise. In another sense, sport itself is environmentally impactful. The carbon footprint for global sport has been estimated to be roughly on par with the entire country of Denmark.

But sport might be a vehicle for combatting climate change as well. For example, this could involve modelling steps towards ‘preferred’ environmental futures. Formula E’s recent attainment of a net zero carbon footprint is a case in point.

This speaker series examines sport in the context of the climate emergency. It considers the politics of sport and the environment, meaning the decision-making of people, organizations, and governments, and the social dynamics that underlie these decisions. It considers environmental practices in sport, ranging from the everyday practices of individuals to the climate change mitigation practices of institutions. And it considers preferred futures based on the idea that imagining climate alternatives is a step towards achieving them.

To register to attend upcoming webinars in the series, you can go here (and scroll to the bottom of the page, where you will see registration information). You will receive information about how to access the webinar after registering.

Upcoming webinar

Michelle Rutty

October 7th, 2022 — 10am Pacific Time

Climate change is, and will continue, to have profound implications for mountain and snow sports tourism. Highly dependent on climate-sensitive natural resources and landscapes, activities such as skiing, snowmobiling and mountaineering face challenges, as observed temperature change (mean and extremes) in North America are projected to continue warming, along with strong declines in glaciers and snow cover. This presentation will highlight the results from several Canadian and US research projects that have used downscaled climate change scenarios and stakeholder surveys (tourists, athletes, coaches) to explore the differential climate risks and opportunities for key winter sports markets, including the Olympic Winter Games. Important knowledge gaps and research priorities will be offered to help advance climate action and aid the transition to a net-zero future.

Dr. Michelle Rutty holds a Canada Research Chair in Tourism, Environment and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Her research is motivated by the incompatibility between sustainability and the rapid growth of the global tourism sector, with key interests including understanding the behavioural response of tourists to environmental change (past, present, future), as well as the climatic risks and emerging opportunities for tourism operators and destinations. She is a contributing author to the Sixth Assessment Report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) North American chapter, a Lead Expert on the Tourism Panel on Climate Change, and co-chair of the International Society of Biometeorology Commission on Climate, Tourism and Recreation.

Past Speakers

David Goldblatt

February 3rd, 2022 Webinar — 9:00am Pacific Time

Soccer Stadium at sunset
Head shot of featured speaker David Goldblatt
Man holding surfboard at sunset

The first webinar in the Sport and the Environment Webinar Series featured author, journalist, and academic, David Goldblatt.

He is the author of The Ball is Round a Global History of Football, The Age of Football: The Global Game in the 21st Century and Playing Against the clock: Global Port and the Climate Crisis. He is also a regular visiting Professor at Pitzer college Los Angeles and is Chair of the NGO, Football For Future.

Dan Wilcock

March 3rd, 2022 Webinar: 12:00pm Pacific Time

Snowboarding on mountain

The second Sport and the Environment webinar featured Dan Wilcock and was titled: Tackling Environmental Issues in Canadian Sport.

Dan Wilcock is a lawyer, with a Master of Law in Global Sustainability and Environmental Law. He has served in a range of leadership roles, including as the President & CEO of the Canada Games Council, where he advanced sustainability planning for the largest multi-sport event in Canada. Prior to that, Mr. Wilcock was an executive in the International Affairs Branch of Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Sport and sustainability are two of Dan’s personal and professional passions. He has founded the Canadian Alliance to the United Nations Sports for Climate Action Framework. He is also a member of Canada’s Ministerial Consultative Committee on Greening the Sport Sector.

Dan has experience in high-level sport as a competitor, coach and organizer for snowboarding across Australia and the United States. Dan lives with his family near the banks of the Ottawa River and loves to be outside and active with his wife and two children as often as possible.

Liv Yoon

March 31st, 2022 Webinar

The third Sport and Environment webinar featured Dr. Liv Yoon and was titled: Envisioning Alternative Socio-Environmental Futures Through Sociocultural Kinesiology.

Dr. Yoon is an incoming Assistant Professor in Race, Ethics, and Physical Culture at the School of Kinesiology at UBC. Previously she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Earth Institute and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, while also serving as a fellow with the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC). Following, she worked in public service at Health Canada’s Climate Change Innovation Bureau. Dr. Yoon’s research is at the intersection of climate change, social inequities, and health, with a focus on community engagement work. Her research considers taking climate change as an opportunity to challenge the status quo and promote structural changes that alleviate social inequities that both led to, and are exacerbated by, the climate crisis. Her PhD training in socio-cultural kinesiology at UBC informs her to think about bodies in sociopolitical contexts, leading to research about how some bodies are considered more ‘dispensable’, and in turn, rendered more vulnerable to climate-related risks and pollution.

Upcoming webinars include:

Michelle Rutty (Canada Research Chair, Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo — October 7th, 2022 – 10am Pacific

To register for upcoming speakers in the series, you can go here (and scroll to the bottom of the page, where you will see registration information).

Support for the seminar series provided by the Centre for Sport and Sustainability and the Centre for Sport Capacity is accompanied by support from the Mobilizing Sport & Sustainability Collective – a research excellence cluster funded through the Provost and Vice-President’s Office at the University of British Columbia. The Collective was assembled to promote awareness about sport’s relationship with sustainability, highlight ways that sport-related social and environmental issues might be addressed, and explore the power of sport as a facilitator for positive change. The Collective, which includes UBC-based, Canada-based and international collaborators from both academic and non-academic communities, operates in association with UBC School of Kinesiology’s Centre for Sport and Sustainability (CSS).