For the first time, Africa will be the stage of the FIFA’s World Cup; but what we all do not know is that it will leave a carbon footstep eight times bigger than the previous one on the FIFA’s World Cup in Germany.
Due to the use of local transport, building new stadiums and the rising use of energy during the world competition, it is estimated that it will be emitted 896.661 tons of carbon dioxide, plus other 1.856.589 tons from international journeys, that will increase global warming.
In order to reduce the threat, Pretoria-together with the collaboration of the Global Environment Funds (GEF)-is investing big sums in two important projects. The first one is related to an attempt to improve the public transport in seven of the nine cities that will be venues of the football championship to decrease the use of taxicabs. For this reason, it was disposed a national inversion of 328 million dollars, in addition to 11 million from the GEF, that promotes the creation of a rapid transport system of buses and an improvement in the infrastructure of pedestrian malls, and bicycle circulation. The second project, almost 10 million dollar, tries to reduce the energy consumerism in six venues, due to the installation of solar panels and efficient lights in the streets, traffic lights, apart from campaigns to get awareness.
Nevertheless, the South Africa vocation for the environment, and the international organizations were put in questioned after the approval, in April, of a credit from the World Bank of 3.000 million dollar to build a power plant fed of coal, which will be among the largest in the world. This decision caused amendments from the United States government, and some European countries, given that several activists reported that it will be emitted 25 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Brazil, venue of the FIFA’s World Cup in 2014, expects to arrange the most ecological tournament in history, which will demand environmental certification to give financial support to the projects to reform and build stadiums. According to authorities, there will be improvements in cleaner transport plans, and promotion of organic products, too. The retired goalkeeper from Uruguay, Fernando Alvez, a guest from the GEF assembly, commented to Tierramérica that Brazil should stop the cut down of trees from the Amazon as a true environmental signal before celebrating the tournament.
As long as the green initiatives associated to football do not stop, the transnational organization of clothes from Nike announced that the nine selected teams that it dress- among them Brazil, Portugal and Holland- will wear shirts made up of recycled materials at rate of eight plastic
bottles per jacket. At the end of the year, it will be made a critical analysis from the ecological projects run in South Africa in observation about the FIFA’s World Cup in order to identify what worked and did not, according to what promised the GEF.
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