Greening Efforts May Fall Short in Carbon-Heavy World Cup

Despite goals to create a carbon-sensitive and environmentally friendly World Cup, the impact of carbon emissions related to the games will be hard for South African cities to counter. Cities have taken many efforts, including tree planting, green design in new stadia, and carbon credit trading systems. But some say those efforts won't be enough.

Despite these efforts, the environmental cost of the World Cup will be heavy. The "carbon footprint" is estimated at the equivalent of 2.75-million tonnes of carbon dioxide, nine times higher than the World Cup in Germany in 2006 and more than twice as high as the Beijing Olympics.

Simple geography is the main reason: foreign visitors will travel a total of 7.1 million kilometres (4.4 million miles) to cheer their teams at the southern tip of Africa, their planes emitting tonnes of carbon.

World Cup will be more grey than green
Independent Online
March 2, 2010

Cape Town to Stop Irrigating Green Point With Drinking Water

Cape Town has announced a "green" plan to irrigate the city's World Cup stadium, opting to use non-potable spring water to irrigate the stadium and the nearby Green Point park, as opposed to the drinking water that had been used in the past.

The City of Cape Town has approved a R15 million "green" project to irrigate 2010 Soccer World Cup stadiums, an official said on Thursday.

After several green options were considered the city decided to use underground spring water for irrigation, said Alderman Clive Justus, mayoral committee member for the city's utility services.

"The final report identified the use of underground spring water from a few natural springs situated above the Molteno Reservoir in the city bowl as being the most favourable solution," he said in a statement.

...Until now, the Green Point Common, which includes the Metropolitan Golf Course, had been irrigated with pure drinking water.

"However, in keeping with the objectives of the 2010 World Cup Project - which also includes the reconfiguration of the Green Point Common - the need to reduce the long-term demand on potable water to irrigate the area was identified at an early stage."

Source:
Cape Town soccer stadiums go green
Independent Online
May 7, 2009

Green Elements Missing from 2010 Plans

Critics have called out the Local Organizing Committee for its lack of environmentally-conscious preparation for the World Cup. The LOC says plans are on their way.

The Cities of Cape Town and Durban are the only host cities that have tabled interventions to reduce the carbon footprint of the event. Both cities have identified target areas such as transport, water, waste management, energy and climate change, and have implemented a number of actions that will mitigate these impacts.

“We have, however, been working towards a national launch of this programme, but that hasn’t happened as yet. There have been a number of problems - it has been the finalisation of the copyright assignment agreement between the designer, ourselves and FIFA,” explained LOC environment representative Ike Ndlovu to Engineering News.

He adds that the LOC is close to concluding the national launch, and that an announcement will be made soon in this regard.

...With its experience following the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the German political foundation, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), sponsored a series of eight facilitated workshops and two discussion forums with a range of experts, stakeholders and interested parties to assist the City of Cape Town and Western Cape provincial government in developing its Green Goal projects.

Three of these workshops, focusing on sustainable development principles, green building, biodiversity, landscaping and sustainable tourism were held in 2007, with two more held in early 2008 on integrated waste management, and project funding and communications. The 2009 workshops have focused on monitoring the progress of the projects.

The Cape Town Host City Action Plan alludes to the fact that a “comprehensive and integrated set of targets are being developed by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (Deat) and the LOC to assist host cities to mitigate the environmental, social and economic impacts of the 2010 FIFA World Cup”.

Source:
Copyright issues delay launch of SA's ‘Green Goal 2010’ strategy
Engineering News
April 14, 2009