- The second edition of Climate Cup, a football tournament that aims to increase awareness about the environment and climate change, was held in Ladakh in September.
- With increasing temperatures and extreme weather events, sporting events face challenges.
- Experts call for urgent mitigation and adaptation measures to protect the future of sports amid a changing climate.
Over 11,000 feet above sea level and enveloped by mountains, six teams competed in the second edition of Climate Cup, a football tournament in Ladakh that aims to increase awareness about the environment and impacts of climate change on lives, livelihoods, and on sports.
“Sports is the one thing that unites all people. That is why we decided to raise awareness about the environment and climate change through a football tournament,” says Tsering Angmo, general secretary of Ladakh Football Association, who also co-founded 1 Ladakh Football Club, a Leh-based professional football club. The tournament, organised by the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) and the Ladakh Football Association, was held in September at the Spituk stadium. Apart from the local team 1 Ladakh FC, J&K Bank FC from Kashmir, Gokulam Kerala FC from Kerala and NorthEast United FC from Assam, were some of the other professional football teams that participated, most from states that also face climate impacts such as erratic rainfall, heat waves and sea level rise.
With increasing temperatures and extreme weather events becoming more frequent and intense, sporting events and sportspersons are facing challenges such as event cancellations or delays, damage to infrastructure, risks of accidents, and health risks such as heat stroke or erythema. Sporting organisations around the world are tackling these challenges by altering the sports schedules. Some marathons are being scheduled at night and in the early morning hours when it is cooler to protect the health of runners. The recent Paris Olympic Games also adopted flexibility in event schedules to avoid exposure to daily heat peaks, installed innovative cooling and shade areas and accurately monitored the temperature and humidity constantly, to ensure optimal performance for the athletes.
“Even for us to organise football tournaments in Ladakh, we prefer the early morning hours or the evening hours. Especially for those training in the Under-17 or Under-13 categories, it is risky to play during the heat peaks as they can fall ill. There are also chances of injury because there is low humidity in Ladakh,” Angmo shares. Dry weather is said to increase the friction between the shoes and the ground and studies note that there is an increased risk of ligament damage in the knees for the athletes.
The Climate Cup 2024 also avoided scheduling matches during the heat peak hours.
Football evolves with extreme temperatures
The global reach of football has increased and the players are expected to perform wherever there are fans, says Suhel Nair, the head coach of Assam-based professional football club, Northeast United Football Club, in conversation with Mongabay India. However, with that reach, comes the need for athletes to adapt quickly to climate impacts.
“It’s becoming noticeably hotter to play during our regular game hours,” Nair shares. “Usually, football matches apart from the Indian Super League (ISL) are scheduled in the mornings and afternoons. Most football matches take place under peak sunshine with 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. as the kick-off times,” he explains. To adapt to this change, new rules have been introduced. While football is typically played in two halves of 45 minutes, in India, additional cooling breaks have been introduced to cope with the heat. These breaks are scheduled around the 30th and 70th minutes, apart from the mandatory break at the 45th minute, he says. “The game is evolving, and so are we, as we try to keep up with these climate-related changes while maintaining performance.” Anand Pushparaj Karumat, Team Manager of Gokulam Kerala FC (the winners of Climate Cup 2024), also adds that they start their training in the early hours of the day.
Delex Namgyal, midfielder of 1 Ladakh FC explains that the increasing temperatures have impacted their playing style. “Football is an outdoor sport, and we run a lot. In some tournaments, especially while playing matches during the daytime, the heat becomes a significant challenge. You can actually feel the heat rising from the ground through the soles of your shoes. This heat impacts the quality of the game—it becomes harder to give your best effort and it directly affects performance and makes it difficult to maintain the same level of play,” he says.
Climate change has influenced not only the way the players play but also the coaching methods, says Nair who has been in the profession for about a decade. “In the past, stopping for water during a session was seen as a sign of poor fitness. Today, however, water breaks are scientifically proven to boost performance, helping players manage the heat and stay hydrated — both of which are increasingly important in this changing climate,” he adds.
The readiness of the sporting world
Several studies around the globe have highlighted the threat to sporting venues and infrastructure with the increase in global temperatures and extreme weather events. Winter sports are already in trouble and as snow conditions turn unpredictable, several destinations are using artificial snow. However, artificial snow cannot be the permanent solution, argues David Goldblatt, long-time sportswriter and researcher. “It (artificial snow) is incredibly expensive to organise. It uses a lot of energy and water. There’ll be a few places where we will be able to continue with winter sports, according to researchers from the University of Waterloo,” he tells Mongabay India.
In his 2020 report titled Playing against the clock, Goldblatt discusses the impacts of heat waves, drought, fires and air pollution, storms, sea level rise, erosion, flooding and more, on big sporting events, and calls for urgent mitigation and adaptation measures.
“All sports that are played outdoors are currently and will be threatened by increasing temperatures and heat waves. Particularly in cricket, players are out there for very long periods in the field. In India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, there’s a lot of concern. This is also going to be true for athletics, football, hockey or other big outdoor sports, even horse racing. With respect to football, the research I’ve done suggests that one quarter of the football stadiums in England are going to be annually flooded or underwater by 2050; and that’s just in England,” he adds.
As races, marathons, and triathlons get cancelled and rescheduled and stadiums get damaged due to extreme weather, researchers working on sports and climate say that mitigation measures are nowhere close. Goldblatt shares that apart from more substitutes and more water breaks, we’ve not seen many interventions in international sports. “We need to get to the core of the problem and accept that the world we’re going to be living and playing in 20 years from now is going to be actually very different. Many are still in denial.”
All sports – regardless of location, level, type, indoor or outdoor – will need to include environmental planning as part of its normal operations, says Walker Ross from the Sport Ecology Group, a community of researchers working to raise awareness about the sports-environment relationship. “I am especially worried for grassroots and lower levels of sport which do not necessarily have the resources to adapt to climate change as readily as those at a higher level of professionalism,” he adds.
Reducing emissions and increasing awareness
While sporting events are impacted by climate change, sports also contribute to a significant portion of emissions. The travel by athletes and teams, travel by spectators, the energy needed to power the venue, catering and other purchases at the venue and their transport, and waste disposal, are some of the major contributors of emissions at big sporting events.
Experts say that organisations and teams have also been slow to commit to the latest targets of the Sports for Climate Action Framework, created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to halve GHG emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2040.
Ladakh’s Climate Cup aims to reduce emissions in its tournaments. “We substituted single-use plastic bottles in our stadium with refillable bottles. We hired e-buses to shuttle the players from their accommodation to the stadium and back. We also distributed recycled jerseys to our volunteers. As the next step, we’re trying to collaborate with the forest department to plant one native tree for each goal scored in the tournament,” Angmo shares. While this attempt is a drop in the ocean, the tournament has inspired football teams to adopt more sustainable practices.
“When the players and the rest of the team stepped onto the open stadium in Ladakh, we felt a sense of responsibility. The landscape and the mountains constantly reminded us of the duty to protect it,” shares Karumat. He says that these days the team carries water cans and dispensers for their practice games, instead of plastic bottles.
“We also got to engage in conversations with people from Leh and we learnt about the impacts of glacier melting, water shortage and more. The impacts of climate change are very different in the mountains when compared to the coasts, which was interesting to understand,” he adds. Karumat is from the coastal state of Kerala that frequently deals with heat waves, sea level rise, landslides and erosion, and flooding, which are intensifying with climate change.
And such events play a vital role in increasing awareness, says Goldblatt, who believes in the power of sports. “Teams must cut fossil fuel sponsorships and sportspersons must demand to get the owners and sponsors on board with climate action targets. There needs to be some leadership and organisations must commit to decarbonisation goals. Meanwhile, the Climate Cup is a great initiative. India is not the only, but a main laggard in climate action in sports, and anything that makes the Indian sports world engage with these issues is incredibly important,” he concludes.
