Standards Development

Scope

This document provides a holistic and cross-sectoral collaborative approach and a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the sustainability of sports facilities and sports games from multiple aspects such as facilities and sites, sourcing and responsible resource use, impact to the eco-environment, mobility, workforce and the public, lower-carbon and climate change, as well as smartness and innovation.

Purpose

Sports games and competitions are held frequently in all countries around the world, feature wide social dissemination and periodicity. Organizing sports games can be resource-intensive, polluting and wasteful, e.g., through generation of wastewater, gas pollutants, and construction material waste. However, they can also bring significant social, economic, and environmental benefits to the host city.

The United Nations has emphasized sport in its ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ stating that “sport is an important enabler of sustainable development”, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has proposed in its "Olympic Agenda 2020" to "include sustainability in all aspects of the Olympic Games” and to “include sustainability in its day-to-day operations”, and indeed, sustainable development in sports games and sports facilities is a growing trend around the world. 

Meanwhile, some countries are actively practicing and implementing the principles of sustainability of sports games and in sports facilities and promote sustainable development through standardisation of sports games and sports facilities.

Beijing, the first host city of both 2022 Winter Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, has systematically implemented the concept of sustainability and, for the first time, has integrated successfully the approaches of ISO 20121 (Event sustainability management systems), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Systems) and ISO 26000 (Social Responsibility) having received certifications. In 2021, the local Beijing standard "Guidance for Event Sustainability Evaluation" was officially published, Shougang Park and the main venues of 2022 Winter Games have implemented this integrated management system standard, and the results of the implementation will be forwarded during the developing process of the standard as a proposal.

Standardization of quantitative evaluation of the sustainability of sports facilities and sports games proves to be conducive to enhance the level of sustainability of sports games and to improve the participation of interested parties to achieve the sustainable development of sports activities on a larger scale, economically, socially, and environmentally, to finally better to support the realization of the United Nations SDGs