December 3 – In the 2022 World Cup sustainability report, FIFA claims that the tournament in Qatar produced 3.8 megatons of CO2, but critics argue the tournament was one of the most polluting ever.
On Friday, FIFA metaphorically put out its trash, publishing arguably three of the most-contentious and skewed reports of its president Gianni Infantino’s regime to date, at the same time.
The world governing body led with its ‘best-ever’ bid evaluation of the Saudi 2034 World Cup bid, and published the Qatar report from its own sub-committee on human rights and social responsibility under the cover of darkness. FIFA also quietly published the 2022 World Cup sustainability report, which claims that the tournament in Qatar produced 3,808,357 tonnes of carbon emissions.
The report says that “FIFA, Q22 and the SC have offset the GHG emissions under their operational control as per the tournament’s carbon footprint through carbon credits.” It adds that “1,852,244 tCO2e (48%) of the total calculated emissions that were not avoided or reduced have been offset.”
Ahead of the 2022 finals, FIFA made the bold claim that Qatar would be the greenest World Cup ever with the organisation’s president Gianni Infantino saying: “[We] aim to make the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022 carbon neutral.”
Hired by FIFA, carbon finance consultancy South Pole calculated that the Qatar World Cup would generate a total of 3.6 megatons of CO2. That figure was later revised, and confirmed by the sustainability report, to 3.8 megatons.
However, the figure remains very disputed. Independent environmental assessors en masse have criticised the report. Carbon Market Watch estimates that the carbon emissions generated by Qatar 2022 could be ten times higher than FIFA’s figure.
South Pole itself is not without controversy either after accusations of profiteering from the sale of carbon credits. A Follow The Money investigation found that Southpole inflated the number of carbon offsets available from a project in Zimbabwe.
Carbon Market Watch and other environmental organisations filed a joint complaint against FIFA in Switzerland, for multiple breaches and violations of the country’s ‘Law against Unfair Competition’. Last year, the Swiss Fairness Commission sided with the complainants and ruled that FIFA could no longer claim publicly that the Qatar World Cup had been CO2-neutral.
The judgement’s conclusion read: “It is recommended that the defendant refrain in future from making the disputed allegations, in particular that the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar would be climate- and C02-neutral, unless it can provide, at the time of disclosure, full proof of the calculation, using generally accepted methods, of all C02 emissions caused by the tournament and proof of the full offsetting of these C02 emissions.”
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