A World Cup on three continents sparks climate concerns
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An announcement on the 2030 and 2034 World Cups will be made by Fifa on Dec 11.
PHOTO: AFP
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PARIS – The 2030 World Cup will send dozens of football teams and hordes of fans criss-crossing the globe for matches on three continents, sparking alarm over the environmental cost.
An announcement on the 2030 and 2034 World Cups will be made on Dec 11, with expectations of a dramatic expansion of geographical footprint along with an increase in planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.
While Saudi Arabia is the lone candidate for 2034, Morocco, Spain and Portugal have formed a joint bid for the 2030 tournament, with Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay each also set to host a match.
Guillaume Gouze, of the Centre of Sports Law and Economics at the University of Limoges in France, said Fifa has a “moral responsibility” to integrate climate concerns into its tournament plans.
Instead, he said, it had proposed World Cups that are an “ecological aberration”.
Benja Faecks of Carbon Market Watch also said that the 2030 tournament – to be held in Europe, Africa and South America – was “an unfortunate geographic choice”.
When an event is spread over sites thousands of kilometres apart, teams and potentially hundreds of thousands of their loyal fans have to travel by plane.
The three matches in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay are to mark the 100th anniversary of the event, which was born in Montevideo.
Fifa is keen to support access to football across different parts of the world, said David Gogishvili, a researcher at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
But “it is a crazy idea in terms of the impact this choice will have on the planet”, he added.
Fifa has already expanded participation in the competition, which will see 48 teams take part in the 2026 edition – held in Mexico, the United States and Canada – compared to 32 in 2022.
Aurelien Francois, who teaches sports management at the University of Rouen in France, says this “is almost worse than the Cup on three continents”.
More teams means more fans wanting to visit the venues, more capacity needed in the hotel and catering sector, and more waste, among other issues.
Fifa argued that, except for the games in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, “for 101 games, the tournament will be played in a footprint of neighbouring countries in close geographic proximity and with extensive and well-developed transport links and infrastructure”.
Meanwhile, oil and gas giant Saudi Aramco became a major Fifa sponsor earlier in 2024 in a controversial deal that runs till 2027.
In October, an open letter from more than a hundred female professional footballers across 24 countries called for the deal to be cancelled on the grounds of human rights and environmental concerns, saying: “Fifa might as well pour oil on the pitch and set it alight.” AFP
