“We need to act (boldly), innovate (broadly), and implement (equitably). It’s going to take all of us. All in. Businesses, governments, and citizens — everyone accounted for, and everyone accountable. A partnership for the planet.”
This is the slogan of Earth Day 2022; a slogan inviting every single one of us, every single organisation, every single community to action. It comes in very timely as the IPCC Working Group III releases its Report, which makes it very clear: “It’s now or never, if world is to stave off climate disaster.”
TO ACT has been the guiding principle of the ASAP project from its inception. Moving form words to action; from guidelines to implementation. And ACT we did.
- The National Olympic Committees of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia have come from “almost zero to just below hero level” when they successfully developed their sustainability strategies and are already implementing them.
- The heroes in our project, our mentors – NOCs of Denmark, Finland and Germany - have also taken great strides on their respective sustainability journeys both internally and externally while working with their member organisations and stakeholders (for more information, see ASAP News).
But today is about “Being all In. A partnership for the planet.” For us, it means helping and enabling other sport organisations to ACT, and that in a strategic and holistic way avoiding one-off actions. To do so, we have developed a Roadmap for Creating a Sustainability Strategy and its Toolbox, which we are beyond excited to launch today in celebration of Earth Day 2022.
The Roadmap presents a process-based framework for the creation of a Sustainability Strategy. While primarily drawing on the expertise and experiences of Olympic movement actors, the Roadmap can be used by any sports organisation wishing to embark on a journey towards sustainability. It provides enough flexibility for each organisation to adapt the process to its own environment and to the circumstances in which it operates.
The initial draft of the document was used by the ASAP project partners in the preparation of their respective sustainability strategies. Their experience with the process, together with the expertise of their mentors, helped to shape the Roadmap into a truly practical guidance document. The text is accompanied by a number of useful tools (ASAP Toolbox), which aim to further facilitate the process. The IOC has contributed to the Toolbox with a draft of the “NOC Sustainability Strategy Template”, the final version of which will be available later this year.
This is our contribution. This is how we are supporting sustainability ACTION, INNOVATION, and IMPLEMENTATION in the sport movement.