Sport & The Environment: Politics, Practices and Preferred Futures
Speaker Series Co-Hosted by the UBC Kinesiology’s Centre for Sport and Sustainability (CSS) and Brock University’s Centre for Sport Capacity (CSC)
Video recording of talk by Dan Wilcock, Thursday, March 3, 2022
About the speaker: 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.
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Notes and timestamps for Dan Wilcock’s talk, March 3 2022
0:00 – 3:30: Rob Millington, professor at Brock University, introduces the speaker series and the speaker, Dan Wilcock. He also acknowledges the land upon which Brock University and UBC are located.
3:30 – 5:35: Dan acknowledges traditional lands of Western Australia and the people of Ukraine during unrest. He begins his discussion on environmental issues in Canadian sport, with a focus on who’s who, what issues are out there, and some discussion. Specifically, Dan notes that his talk is divided into three topics:
- Background and context
- Observations on the Canadian sport system
- Achieving internal buy-in and generating momentum within an organization
5:35 – 17:00: Background and context
- Dan begins by reflecting on his own relationship with nature and with sport.
- He then explains key global contextual items that relate to sport and the environment: the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), of which climate change is one; the Paris Agreement, the COPs (Conference of the Parties, the annual UN climate change conference), and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports
- Dan goes onto discuss the domestic context, nothing that the various levels of government, federal, provincial, and municipal, can affect change related to sport and the environment. He explains that consistent approaches to climate issues across the country is an issue in Canada, but that the municipal level is especially ripe for affecting environmental change.
- Dan then explains that the private sector also has a key role to play. He says that climate change an economic opportunity and boardroom obligation, and there is also increased requirements for disclosing material climate related risks to investors.
- Public activism is the final key arena that Dan mentions, noting that international activism, shareholder activism, public lawsuits, all can make an impact.
- Dan then brings the discussion back to sport, explaining that sport is affected by climate change, yet sport also contributes to climate change.
17:00- 26:00: Observations on Canadian sport
- Dan begins this section with a reminder that sport can be very powerful and good, but that sport must be thoughtfully done if it is to enact good
- In the Canadian Sport Policy 2012-2022, Dan explains that there is no substantive consideration of the environment or climate
- Despite this, he mentions a few venues that tried to make gains in sustainability space:
- Vancouver 2010 Olympics led to the Canadian Standards Association publishing a standard called Requirements and Guidance for Organizers of Sustainable Events, which remains relevant today
- He also mentions the Banff marathon, Canada Games, and Tennis Canada having various sustainability efforts
- Dan then explains that sport and environmental issues are gaining momentum in Canada, citing the following examples:
- United Nations and IOC rallying global sports community on environment issues
- United Nations Sport for Climate Action Framework 2018
- Canadian alliance to S4CAF
- Ministerial consultative committee on Greening the Sport Sector
- Inaugural Green Sports Day Canada – Oct 6, 2021
- New Canadian Sport Policy under development
- Sport Minister St. Onge’s mandate letter includes environment
26:00 – 42:09: Achieving internal buy-in
- In the final section of his talk, Dan explains some tactics for achieving internal buy-in for sport orgs to make sustainability commitments.
- He first discusses intrinsic motivations to commit to environmental issues and where these might come from:
- Leadership, staff, board
- Membership or athletes
- Financial considerations
- Role of an internal champion
- He goes on to discuss some extrinsic motivators, such as:
- More/ethical pressures from customers, fans, stakeholders, peers
- Regulatory requirements
- Financial pressures (e.g. funding requirements)
- Sport system requirements (e.g. hosting requirements)
- Dan recommends that organizations simply start the dialogue and find out where there’s interest in environmental issues, and encouraging people passionate about environmental issues to champion them within the organization.
- Dan then makes some recommendations for how to make environmental commitments ‘stick’ in organizations:
- Bake sustainability into the culture of an organization
- Stakeholder consultations
- Develop a range of options and recommendations
- Develop credible targets and implementation plan for the organization
- g., strategic plan adopts sustainability focus
- Establish accountabilities
- Measure and report on progress. Adjust as necessary
- Finally, Dan shares some common obstacles related to environmental issues for organizations. These include:
- Having resources for environmental expertise and money to address sustainability issues
- Perceptions that environmental considerations are non-core issues
- Lack of an internal “champion” to lead
- Concerns around financial implications
- Fear of criticism
42:09 – End: Questions
- Q: What are you optimistic, pessimistic about re climate, and what are some emerging issues?
A: Optimistic – There is no silver bullet, massive economic and cultural transformation ahead of us. Don’t push pressure on oneself to fix this overnight, collective action required. Take action in your spheres of influence. Sport has reason for optimism because youth are vocal about concerns and wanting to see change, social media provides access to sports stars as whole people, use their visibility and profile to reach to talk about issues they care about, e.g., Protect Our Winters
Pessimistic: Federalist structure in Canada – different approaches to tackling climate change across the country with different governments – backsliding on climate policy as governments change, challenges in achieving consistency in policy – but we can all contribute.
- Q 2: Once buy-in is achieved, what strategies can organizations use to ensure sustainability is a goal well into the future?
A: lock it into the strategic planning for the future. 4-year strategic plans typical for sport organizations. For the length of a strategic plan, bake it in. Adpot a sustainability lens or framework to your strategic plan, e.g. have an economic pillar, social pillar, environmental pillar, sport pillar. Once those conversations around environment are second nature, it perpetuates the culture. New employees will absorb the culture and those things will continue.
- Q3: Any other low hanging fruits that organisations can capitalize on? Or individuals?
A: Concrete actions. For example, we saw an overnight transformation with COVID related to travel emissions, for instance. We have proof of a concept related to travel. Engage with adjacent sectors to address climate issues.
- Q4: International standards developed for assessing sport events and helping environmental performance are voluntary and flexible guidelines which is good in some ways and not in other, any thoughts on mandatory standards?
A: As a former law enforcement guy, I have strong views in this area that there will always be a percentage of a sector or a community that will be intrinsically motivated to do the right things, there will always be a sector who don’t really move either way, and a small percentage of bad eggs. My views are I have no problem with direct intervention to achieve policy goals, and this is an area in that bucket. Most obvious tool is contribution agreements, that tool has been used to safe sport, gender equity, should be used for sustainability. Can be some ‘carrots’ in terms of making funding available to do sustainability planning, get some role models leading the way. Yes there are options along those lines.
- Q5: given experience on Canada Games Council, you worked with many Canadian sport federations, what is one common characteristic of these orgs?
A: When I think about Canadian organizations, I’d put it down to there being a champion. It’s rare that a CEO would decide to do something on sustainability and then bring someone in. Usually it’s someone with a voice internally, membership pressure etc. it becomes important intrinsically to the organization so they make it happen. Often it will be on the side of peoples’ desk until it gains momentum. Being or identifying a champion is really important.
- Q6: Any suggestions for making those types of partnerships with groups in the field?
A: In terms of reaching out to others navigating same challenges as you, Canadian Alliance is an open group. Other partnerships are the commercial partnerships, do your homework. What are the organizations where you have a lot of alignment. Reaching out, having fruitful convos about supporting each other’s objectives.