Hello and welcome back to Quit Playing Games (With Our Earth)! For most readers, you might have seen my previous post on the growing problem of anthropogenic-induced Olympic pollution, and obtained a brief understanding of the issue’s deep-rooted nature. However, you might still be wondering exactly how severe the impact of the Olympic Games on the environment is — to what extent is it changing weather patterns and causing disruptions to our ecosystem?
The simple answer is that we cannot be certain, given inherent difficulties in data collection. Being a highly-celebrated mega event, the Olympic Games attracts massive numbers of spectators and tourists who wish to experience the Olympic spirit lingering in host cities. A case in point would be the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which drew in a whopping 1.17 million tourists, twice of that for the widely hyped 2014 World Cup (de Faria Nogueira and Di Cola, 2018). While such dense tourism inflows are welcomed by host cities for the economic growth they bring, they also make it challenging for authorities to determine the exact extent of pollutive activities and consequently, the amount of pollution generated.
Record tourist numbers were observed in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympic Games (China Daily, 2016)
As per Figure 1, the calculation of carbon footprint by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) only accounted for those who were officially recognised by the IOC to have attended the Olympics — such as sports experts and staff — or purchased Olympic-related merchandise. Pollution data could thus be understated, as the consumption patterns of the aforementioned tourists who were also present at the Olympic Games were not acknowledged. In fact, this was observed for the 2016 Olympic Games, where transport-related pollution data was under-calculated. While IOC reports had expressed hope of falling carbon emissions, with approximately 28500 athletes and staff to be flown via the carbon offset scheme (Clark, 2016), some argued otherwise, pointing out that spectators travelling by air were not included. This reinforces the sheer difficulty of quantifying pollution data at mega events, with certain pollutive activities falling under authorities’ radars.
Figure 1: A breakdown of the carbon footprint produced in 2016 and 2017, which were Olympic Games and non-Games years respectively (IOC, 2018)
Nevertheless, we should still exercise environmental consciousness at the Olympic Games, and strive to minimise pollution. While making a consumption choice takes mere seconds, removing the pollutants released during that consumption takes years, and even decades. This concept of residence time, which refers to the average time a pollutant spends in a pollution medium before being removed (Zhao et al., 2020), will be further elaborated in subsequent posts on water pollution, so stay tuned!
References
China Daily (2016). Rio sees 1.17 million tourists during Olympics, zero cases of Zika [Online image]. China Daily. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2016rioolympics/2016-08/25/content_26591901.htm
Clark, S. (2016, August 18). The Environmental Impact Of The Olympics. HuffPost. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/-frontier/the-environmental-impact-_b_11581162.html
de Faria Nogueira, M. A., & Di Cola, L. F. L. L. (2018). From marvelous city to Olympic city: the image of Rio de Janeiro as tourist destination. In Z. Pinto-Coelho & R. Pinto (Eds.), Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais/Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies (pp. 103-120). Centro de Estudos of Communication and Society.
International Olympics Committee (2018). IOC Sustainability Report [Online image]. International Olympics Committee. https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/IOC/What-We-Do/celebrate-olympic-games/Sustainability/IOC%20Sustainability%20Report_Final%20Rev1.pdf
Zhao, N., Wang, G., Li, G., Lang, J., & Zhang, H. (2020). Air pollution episodes during the COVID-19 outbreak in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China: An insight into the transport pathways and source distribution. Environmental Pollution, 267, 1-11. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.envpol.2020.115617