As sports can be considered one of the most popular leisure activities for a great share of Europe’s population - either through practicing them or enjoying them as a supporter, they have an intangible potential for provoking a positive mindset change in wider communities towards contribution to environmentally friendly practices and building resilience therein, in general.

While cities and regions have the ultimate responsibility to steer our lifestyles and habits towards securing well-being for all of us through relevant policies and strategies, their execution, deployment, and attainment considerable depend on the way communities adopt them and contribute towards achieving them. Environmentally friendly lifestyle plays a significant role in this mission – through the way we purchase, consume, and dispose of things.

While goods and services and the necessary resource consumption are the obvious elephants in the room, the overall experience expands environmental impacts way beyond – affecting water use, energy consumption, biodiversity and ecosystems suffering, and much more. The experience we get from sports is what makes us happy (depending on the score). Projects and initiatives show that sports and the outreach they have – tens of thousands of people in each European city, are a largely untapped source of contribution to a more resilient and environmentally responsible society.

What skills and tools are needed to turn things around and consider sports as a driver for major attitude change? How to make sports aware of this opportunity? Why should sport entities and local and regional authorities working together rather than be in a love and hate relationship? This is what this Green Week side event wants to give answers to.

 

Agenda

Keynote speeches

• 10.00 – 10.05: Introduction
• 10.05 – 10.15: Cities and regions tapping into lifestyle choices for enhancing sustainable resource management;
• 10.15 – 10.25: The power of sports in contributing to more environmentally friendly communities
• 10.25 – 10.45: TBD

 

Presentations

• 10.45 – 11.00: How sustainable are sports today and why aren’t they more sustainable? Motivations and barriers;
• 11.00 – 11.15: Assessing sports’ own environmental impacts and getting inspired to do better: The GreenSportsHub Self-Assessment Tool;
• 11.15 – 11.30: Sport entities and their local and regional authorities: friends or foes?
• 11.30 – 11.45: Taking advantage of solutions for sports and adapting them to tourism and culture;

 

Coffee break

 

Discussion panel

• 12.15 – 13.00 Enabling actions and skills for improving environmental management in sports.

 

Closing

• 13.00 – 13.10: Sustainable sports and the necessary European framework: policy recommendations
• 13.10 – 13.20: Taking sport organisations on board for a joint effort and biggest impact possible
• 13.20 – 13.30: Final word

 

 

Registration

Book your seat for the Panel Debate