If there’s one thing Seb Coe is not afraid of, it’s making a bold public statement.

More than a few eyebrows were raised when World Athletics, the international federation of which he is president, announced that it would introduce $50,000 prize money for Olympic champions at the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

However, what has garnered much less attention (apart from within the small but growing circles of sport concerned with sustainability) is Coe’s strong and consistent messaging around climate change and the perils it poses for his sport.

Almost five years ago, the chairman of the London 2012 Organising Committee, sat down with The Sustainability Report and said that he wanted World Athletics to “have something to say – and the ability to be practical” about the big issues such as climate change.

As well as the most pressing concerns around safeguarding athlete health and performance from the increasing heat and extreme conditions, for Coe, World Athletics doing its bit to address climate change came down to one thing – relevance.

“Young people don’t just look at your organisation as a political party or a sports federation or a tech business,” he said. “They ask a fundamental question: ‘do you look like the world I live in?’”

Fundamental link

Over the subsequent years, Coe has continued to speak his mind about the fundamental link between the worsening environmental conditions and the future prospects of the sport he is shepherding. 

The fact that he is one of the few sports leaders to do so – certainly the most high profile – has earned World Athletics ‘outstanding leadership’ recognition from a piece of work carried out by the Sport Ecology Group (SEG), in collaboration with this publication, to explore the evolution of sustainability work carried out by international federations in the Olympic Movement between Tokyo 2020 and the upcoming Games in the French capital.

While most federation presidents and general secretaries talk up the prospects of expanding their sport into countless regions and territories, Coe has mused, on more than one occasion, about the potential need for major athletics events to be withdrawn or rescheduled in some areas because of concerns around heat and air quality.

Athlete safety and welfare, he said, would be the top priority in any major debates going forward. Ahead of the latest World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, last year, Coe insisted that, on his watch, his organisation would “not shirk” difficult decisions.

“We are going to have to have a think about this,” he said. “And maybe some of our endurance events, particularly the road, need to be staged at times of year where you are not putting athletes at risk.”

He added: “Are there countries we’re not going to be able to go to? Climate change is affecting everybody, whether it is forest fires, flooding, landslides, we’ve got our problems here and it’s not limited to those areas we were instinctively having to figure out 20 or 30 years ago.”

Environmental criteria

But beyond asking and addressing tough questions in front of TV cameras, Coe’s concerns about the impact of climate change on his sport have been mirrored by the actions of his organisation. According to the SEG’s sustainability operations matrix, World Athletics has met five of the six criteria for assessing the progress of international federations.

From a governance perspective, World Athletics has a sustainability strategy in place, as well as environmental criteria in leading governance documents. It has a full-time member of staff, head of sustainability Bob Ramsak, as well as guidance for its events and members.

Operationally, its Athletics for a Better World Standard has set a number of binding environmental, social and governance obligations that host cities or venues need to adhere to if they want to run a World Athletics-sanctioned event, with early tests in Budapest and during this year’s World Indoor Championships in Glasgow.

The standard has 55 action areas, with 20 mandatory (and 100 optional) points across sustainability leadership, sustainable production and consumption, climate change and carbon, local environment and air quality, global equality and diversity, accessibility and wellbeing.

With 90% of its carbon emissions coming from the movement of staff and athletes, World Athletics is moving towards a more sustainable travel policy and the restructuring of its competition calendar to reduce the distance people need to travel.

Different tones

However, its approach to climate action moves beyond its operational impact and signing agreements like the UNFCCC Sports for Climate Action Framework; World Athletics is one of the few major sports organisations to use its platform to address the consequences of climate change through several mediums.

Its tone can be stark: like Coe’s musings about the sport’s future viability, a panel it hosted showcasing the plight of small island nations and an activation at its Green Zone in Budapest to show the impact of extreme flooding on athletics venues on the current climate trajectory.

Its tone can be light and engaging: like its work with its Champions for a Better World, a group of climate-conscious athletes who spread the word via social, content creation, meet-and-greets at events and through their own non-athletic work.

World Athletics has also taken prominent roles in major European Union-funded projects, like GAMES (which explores ways to bake climate action into governance and operations) and BENCHES (which looks at the impact of sport on nature and the extent to which sport depends on ecosystem services).

Perhaps the pivotal moment highlighting Coe’s and World Athletics’ central role in addressing climate change was when Coe wrote the foreword for the latest Rings of Fire II report, which examined the risk of heat to athletes at Paris 2024 and beyond.

“There has never been a greater need for heightened awareness, discussion and research into what is happening on the planet and why. Sport is just one part of that, but we cannot be spectators, we must all play a role,” he wrote.

“We are in a race against time. And this is one race we simply cannot afford to lose.”

Coe didn’t lose many races when he was competing. His sport (and many others) will be hoping he will also be on the winning side this time around.

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