While not unique, still a welcome addition to the ongoing environmental turn in sport studies

Daniel Svensson
Department of Sport Sciences, Malmö University

Swedish historian David Larsson Heidenblad recently described the environmental turn in the 1970s as a change in knowledge circulation. In the decades before, it was hard for the public to know much about environmental issues such as acid rain or climate change. But only a few years later, it was harder NOT knowing about these issues. The knowledge was widely circulated and became an established part of what everyone was expected to know.

For environmental sustainability issues in sport, we are in such a transformational phase now. Only a couple of decades ago, few sport-related organizations, educations or athletes would be expected to know (or care) much about environmental sustainability. Today, this is no longer the case. Sustainability issues have reached the mainstream in sport, which in academia is most evident by the rapidly growing number of books published on the topic.

Therefore, I find it rather surprising that the book at hand is introduced by the editors as “the first text to introduce sustainable development within sport (SDoS) and through sport (S4SD)”. The claim sounds a bit too bold, but the book does bring something very useful in its distinction between the two different approaches to sport sustainability (SDoS and S4SD).

The editors Triantafyllidis and Mallen (both well-renowned names in the field) have assembled a range of interesting contributions from scholars and practitioners. The inclusions of professionals working in the sports sector adds important perspectives on how the many concepts discussed throughout the book can be put to use outside academia.

How can growing political ambitions to make sports environmentally sustainable affect the capacity of sports to contribute to public health, integration, or personal development?

Divided into three parts and 13 chapters, the book covers a wide range of topics relating to sport and sustainable development. I read part one as a sort of extended introduction, dealing with motivations for studying sport sustainability (ch. 1), definitions and concepts such as SDoS (ch. 2) and S4SD (ch. 3), as well as links between sport sustainability and the UN:s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; ch. 4).

Part two is more detailed and has six chapters, one for each of the sustainable development perspectives identified by the editors. Apart from the three aspects of sustainable development commonly used – the social, the economic and the environmental – we also have the personal, the technological and the political dimensions. This part of the book is important, as it highlights both how sport can work with sustainability through the perspectives above, and what sport can bring to the global sustainability work. The focus on how technology can impact sustainability in sport is timely, given how the role of advanced technology has increased and will most likely continue to do so. How will these technological developments affect the potential for sustainable sports?

At times, and this is not unique for this book, connections between the different chapters could have been elaborated. More integration between the different perspectives in part two could have highlighted some serious tensions between different aspects of sport sustainability. How will, for example, an increasing use of advanced and expensive technology impact the environmental footprint of sports? How can growing political ambitions to make sports environmentally sustainable affect the capacity of sports to contribute to public health, integration, or personal development? While the book does not always provide clear answers, it raises important questions. Some of these are addressed in the third part of the book, where Triantafyllidis and Mallen formulate their future vision for sport and sustainable development. They operate mainly on a policy level, arguing for the need for building structural capacities and robust organizations to tackle the issues at hand. I sometimes miss hands-on examples of how sports can become more sustainable, also on a local/grassroots level. The inclusion of practitioners in each chapter helps to some extent, but the reader is still left wondering how the policy-making and organizational transformations will be possible. Adapting successfully to the SDGs before 2030 seems more or less utopian, at least if we look at international elite sport. I also would have liked some sharper conclusions and suggestions after each chapter. The concluding remarks tend to be rather vague and general, but the review questions and learning activities are more challenging and I am eager to try some of them out in upcoming courses.

The book is intended as a textbook and has all the characteristics of one, including learning objectives, review questions, learning activities and additional resources. This might make it a bit less reader-friendly for the non-student, but very useful in higher education. The pedagogical structure and the in-depth discussions about central theories and concepts will be helpful in many courses and programs. It is a bit unfortunate that some of the more challenging aspects of sustainable development, such as tensions between different SDGs and power structures in global sports, are not really discussed in-depth here. The focus on policy-making is important but feels slightly disconnected from the everyday training session or grassroots match. That said, returning to the words of Larsson Heidenblad, Triantafyllidis and Mallen has made it even harder to ignore the growing knowledge base about sport sustainability. Though maybe not as unique as the editors claim, Sport and Sustainable Development: An Introduction is a welcome part of the ongoing environmental turn in sport studies.

Copyright © Daniel Svensson 2022

References

Larsson Heidenblad, David (2021). The environmental turn in postwar Sweden: a new history of knowledge. Lund: Lund University Press.