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Room: Zaragoza (4th floor plenary session) and Burgos + Leon (1st floor parallel sessions)

Facilitator: Caroline Jessop, Clear Meetings

Keynote: Karim Abu-Omar, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen Nürnberg, Germany

Moderator: Daniel Cade, Responsible Sport

Panellists: Karim Abu-Omar, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen Nürnberg, Germany; Réka Veress, Budapest Sport Service Provider Nonprofit Ltd; Rocio Ruiz-Berdejo, Forever Green, Real Betis Balompié, Spain; Oliver Vanges, Lokale og Anlægsfonden (Danish Foundation for Culture and Sports Facilities).

Climate change and the need to reduce global carbon emissions drastically in the upcoming years pose a serious challenge to grassroots sport. Not only is sport more difficult in heat and people need to adapt, but also many types of sport and exercise come with a comparable high carbon footprint and other negative environmental impacts. To this point, it is not clear how grassroots sport can evolve in being healthy for people and the planet. Potentially, a paradigm shift towards a concept of sustainable grassroots sport has to be undertaken. In this presentation, Karim Abu-Omar will critically analyse the interconnections between sport and planetary health and suggest potential steps towards such a concept.

Science has been talking about climate change and showing us proof for decades. We have been trying to take steps towards environmental sustainability and striving to be open to transformation in areas where climate change requires behavioural change.

Let’s be honest. We know (or have heard) about sustainability, recycling, carbon footprints, and how harmful we can be to our own planet. This session is for the ones who want more. Those who want more than adapting environmental sustainability to our organisations and grassroots sport sectors’ needs.

We will talk about how we can make sure that environmental sustainability becomes the core value and choice when making our decisions in terms of our needs, activities, and all events in the grassroots sport sector. This “dream” or “ideal” plan brings many difficulties and questions to the table. What are the challenges? Are we ready to embed environmental sustainability in our DNA? How realistic is this goal?

You will feel provoked, maybe surprised but surely ready to generate more creative ideas. You might even end up in the panel discussion, who knows? Are you ready to get on board?

In this workshop, we will look at what concrete solutions we can find as the grassroots sports sector to the challenges we address in the environmental sustainability debate. We will draw up an “ideal plan” and “reality check” in areas such as Events, Strategy, Governance, Communications and Projects.

We will try to come up with some ideas that will allow us to embed environmental sustainability into our organisations’ DNA rather than adapting it to grassroots sport sectors’ needs.

If you’re willing to be inspired, and be a part of a change, let’s meet in the environmental sustainability interactive track at the MOVE Congress 2023!