One of the largest and widely celebrated sporting events in the history of sports, the Olympic games, need no introduction. Inspired by the Ancient Olympic Games in Greece nearly two thousand year ago, the modern Olympic games started during the late 1800s and has been successfully continued ever since.
With over 200 countries participating in the Tokyo Olympics this year, we saw that the spirit of the games can never be burned down even after such adverse situations due to a global pandemic that has changed the lives of millions around the world.
The Modern Olympics are a catalyst for national pride with the host nation spending billions of dollars to construct the Olympic Village, the sporting venues and showcase it to the entire world to see.
Thousands of athletes from all across the globe come and participate for national pride and be crowned as an Olympic medal winner, an Olympian! The champions are celebrated as national heroes and in many countries are showered with praise and opportunities.
Hosting the Olympics is great for a city, with guaranteed increase in tourism, development and international attention among others. The bidding for the host nations starts from 12 to 8 years prior to the event. This is an endeavour that takes a lot of planning, preparation, attention to detail and a financial budget that exceeds many a costs.
However, many cities that have hosted the Olympic Games in the past have noticed that the welcoming of International athletes has been beneficials in far fewer ways than they all hoped for. The economic effects of the Olympics include building stadiums, large scale stadiums and other specialized infrastructure for specific games. Along with this, upgrading highways, improving public transport, ensuring adequate hotel facilities among others to accommodate the heavy inflow of tourists.
With all these economic factors coming into play, hosting the games might seem attractive, but they are not the only things that need to be considered. The environmental impacts are far worse causing many irreversible damages many of which the public is never made aware of.
Climate change, water pollution and deforestation are just a few of the disasters that were contributed by the Olympics. The Rio Games in 2016, saw 17,000+ tonnes of waste being produced and used 29,5000 Gigawatts of electricity most of it coming from non-renewables along with 29,000+ litres of fuel.
Adding to this the Rio Games emitted more than 3.6 million tonnes of Carbon in the air. Air pollution, Industrial pollution and shortage of water facilities have seen to have long term adverse effects on the host cities and its people.
For instance, the Sydney Olympics in 2000 saw waste generated was land-filled on site and did not practise segregation or treatment of waste. The games in Athens in 2004, saw them use their Schinias wetland, for competitions such as rowing and canoeing, which were one of the few natural wetlands remaining in the area.
The London Games in 2012 saw, against the original claim of Zero Carbon, indulged in offsetting carbon emissions. The Rio games saw sewage being dumped in already polluted Guanabara Bay, the destruction of the Marapendi Bio-reserve, home to some of the rarest species of butterflies to accommodate golf.
This, even though is a negligence from the governing body, the Committee promised to plant 24 million trees while the organizers only planted about 8 million of them. The Tokyo Olympics imported plywood for the sitting area from the tropical forests of Indonesia only to be in vain as there was no attendance for the Olympic Games due to the ongoing pandemic.
From 2000, even with almost every host nation taking initiatives to hold a sustainable Olympics have actually failed to deliver and only harmed the environment more so than ever. Even though they did take a step in the right direction, there is a long way before anyone can actually host a truly sustainable olympic tournament. All major International sporting events play a pivotal role in todays globalised society and impact millions of people across the globe, if not billions.
So, it is the responsibility of the organizers to recognize and act on their roles towards humanity, ever beyond the sporting event they organize. With such environmental effects, if the environment is prioritized, it sends a very important message to all the spectators, and instills the idea of how important the environment is and its impacts over the longer run. The time has come for everyone to prioritize climate change and hosting a sustainable Olympics would be a marvelous achievement and would set a valuable president.