Well-respected activist Martin Luther King Jr. had once remarked, “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.” Perhaps the same can be said about air pollution at the Olympic Games — while its immediate impacts are confined to host cities, these impacts eventually snowball and transcend national boundaries. This interdependence between the local and global, then, is what explains the presence of environmental injustice globally. Similar to city-level environmental injustice where the marginalised are disproportionately affected by air pollution, developing countries are hit more severely by pollution-induced climate impacts.
Developing countries tend to bear the brunt of air pollution impacts, even though such pollution originates from mostly developed host cities (India Today, 2019)
But how exactly does localised air pollution extend to the global scale? The answer lies in the intensification of the greenhouse effect. When Olympic venues are constructed and urban traffic increases, massive amounts of radiation-trapping pollutants — particularly carbon dioxide — are emitted (Schmidt, 2020). This increase in global carbon footprint and trapping of longwave radiation not only raises global atmospheric temperatures, but also influences long-term rainfall availability (Kellogg and Schware, 2019). These climatic changes increase the likelihood of extreme weather events, which greatly devastate developing countries’ economies due to the lack of comprehensive mitigation measures (Kellogg and Schware, 2019).
While data on the exact climatic and socio-economic impact of Olympic-induced air pollution remains limited, it is fair to hypothesise that such pollution worsens environmental injustice. As mentioned previously, air pollution generated at the Olympic Games is inevitably significant, given the large scale of the event and its pollutive activities. In fact, according to Figure 1, new construction is one of the least sustainable but regularly occurring activities at the Olympic Games, with the second lowest sustainability score of 35. This, coupled with recurring incidents where extensive areas of carbon-absorbing vegetation are cut down for venue construction (Konstantaki and Wickens, 2010), reinforces the sheer amount of carbon being released throughout the Olympic Games. Therefore, it is possible that these localised carbon emissions accumulate, eventually altering global climate patterns while causing disproportionate economic damage to developing countries.
Figure 1: An infographic outlining the mean values of nine indicators used in assessing the sustainability of the Olympic Games, and the distribution of values. These indicators are scored from 0 to 100, with 0 meaning ‘least sustainable’ and 100 ‘most sustainable’ (Müller et al., 2021)
Therein lies the manifestation of environmental injustice, which is supported by Borunda’s (2019) findings on climate change-induced inequality. As per figure 2, most countries with high economic damage — who ironically generate the least carbon emissions — lie within the less developed Global South. Considering that these countries inherently suffer from climate vulnerability as they lack sufficient finances to invest in climate-resilient infrastructure, the occurrence of climatic impacts engenders the need for post-disaster relief and worsens their fiscal positions. This further compromises their climate vulnerability as they are unable to implement cost-intensive mitigation measures, creating a vicious cycle where these countries continually experience climate threats and environmental injustice.
Figure 2: A choropleth map illustrating the uneven impact of climate change on countries’ national economies (top) and the global distribution of carbon emissions per capita (bottom) (Borunda, 2019)
Admittedly, such environmental injustice can be lessened through supranational mutual aid programmes, where development agencies offer financial assistance to developing countries to tackle climate impacts. Nevertheless, such measures overlook the root cause of environmental injustice — the generation of pollution. Considering the potential for air pollutants to react with each other and develop into more hazardous secondary pollutants, it is hence crucial to minimise air pollution, especially at mega-events like the Olympic Games. Only then will we be one step closer to eradicating environmental injustice.
References
Borunda, A. (2019, April 23). Inequality is decreasing between countries—but climate change is slowing progress. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-economic-inequality-growing
India Today. (2019). 1 lakh children under 5 years of age die from air pollution in India every year: Study [Online image]. India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/latest-studies/story/air-pollution-india-deaths-children-five-years-report-centre-for-science-and-environment-1543779-2019-06-06
Kellogg, W. W., & Schware, R. (Eds.). (2019). Climate change and society: consequences of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429048739
Konstantaki, M., & Wickens, E. (2010). Residents’ perceptions of environmental and security issues at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 15(4), 337-357. https://doi.org/10.1080/14775085.2010.533921
Müller, M., Wolfe, S. D., Gaffney, C., Gogishvili, D., Hug, M., & Leick, A. (2021). An evaluation of the sustainability of the Olympic Games. Nature sustainability, 4(4), 340-348. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00696-5
Schmidt, R. (2020). The carbon footprint of the games–International climate change law and the Olympics. American Journal of International Law, 114, 362-367. https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2020.71