World Cup: Qatar’s green own goal as World Cup fans set to jet in from Dubai

DUBAI – The

Middle East’s first World Cup

promises boom time for Dubai hotels, with thousands of fans expected to descend on the Gulf city due to limited accommodation in neighbouring host nation Qatar.

But the environmental costs of transporting those visitors nearly 400km for match days, overwhelmingly by plane, raises further doubts over Qatar’s pledge in 2021 to host the first-ever carbon-neutral World Cup.

While more than a million fans are expected to attend the tournament, Qatar had just 30,000 hotel rooms as of March. It is not known how many more have been added since then.

“We expect the traffic to be pretty big and pretty busy to and from the World Cup,” said Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths, predicting many fans will choose to stay in Dubai, where there are about five times as many hotel rooms.

Qatar Airways has helped organise a shuttle service operated by regional airlines in and out of Doha on match days from Gulf cities, including at least 60 daily flights to and from Dubai.

That raises questions over the organisers’ initial pledge to make the event carbon neutral, a large part of which they said hinged on it being centred around Doha, with fans flying into one airport and staying in one location, rather than being spread across numerous cities.

A June 2021 report, covering tournament-related activities from 2011 to 2023, said the World Cup was expected to produce 3.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, with travel the largest contributor. That was produced before the shuttle services between Qatar and other Gulf states were unveiled in 2022.

“The immense volume of shuttle flights further undermines the claim that having so many stadiums concentrated in a small geographical area would help reduce emissions related to air travel,” said Khaled Diab of Carbon Market Watch.

But a spokesman for the World Cup organisers said its shuttle service enables “efficient direct flights to and from the Fifa World Cup in Qatar”, which it says are “significantly more carbon effective than flights with stopovers”.

To ease the hotel squeeze, Qatar built temporary accommodation on the outskirts of Doha, while cruise ships will anchor off the coast offering accommodation to fans.

But hotels in Dubai already reported strong bookings in the fourth quarter, particularly during the World Cup and is said to be four times that of 2019, the year before the pandemic.

Climate advocates had already raised doubts about the event being carbon neutral, although the organisers have announced a string of initiatives to reach that goal. These include solar-powered stadium air conditioning and purchasing credits to offset emissions.

But Greenpeace programme director Julien Jreissati said the tournament was not going to be carbon neutral even before the shuttle flights. “The problem with offsetting is, basically, it doesn’t work,” he said. REUTERS