Summary
What difference then can sport make to enabling Planetary Health?
By Grant Jarvie, Walker Ross, Corinne Reid, Chang Su, Liz Grant and Stuart MacDonald.
1. Sport possesses untapped potential to drive urgent action on planetary health challenges, combining mass appeal with practical solutions for environmental and health crises.
2. Addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change , human health and biodiversity loss is a wicked problem of our times. The Planetary Health Community (PH) community is a trans-disciplinary, solutions orientated, social movement focused on analysing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions to earth’s natural systems on human health and our shared planetary home (Planetary Health Alliance, 2025).
3. In the face of mounting global planetary challenges, the critical role of partnerships in achieving multi-lateral agreed outcomes has perhaps never been more apparent. A chasm persists between the aspiration of global cooperation and the reality of fragmented, underfunded, and ineffective partnerships. This gap is evident in addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change, human health, and biodiversity loss. Tools that have scale reach and accessibility are needed more than ever to fuel a new era of activism. Sport could lead on planetary health while also cleaning up its own house (New Weather Institute 2025).
4. The PH community has begun to scratch the surface of the potential of sport to enable solutions, and add value and scale through sport as a social movement (Reid, et al 2022; 2024). Others have joined the game in calling for the sports and exercise community to be advocates for the cause (Lemarchand, Marrauld , Dandrieux et al. 2025). This intersection matters because sport uniquely combines global reach, emotional engagement, and practical environmental dependencies, creating unprecedented opportunities to mobilse public action on climate change , biodiversity loss, and environmental threats. Moreover, sport’s vulnerability to environmental degradation, from altered seasons affecting winter sports to extreme weather disrupting sports events, positions athletes and sports organisations as both victims of planetary health crises and powerful advocated for urgent solutions.
Sport and Activism
5. Transformative outcomes from sport enabled social and political activism have been evident . Consider the following evident in the following illustrative examples: (i) the 1960s, Olympic Project for Human Rights leading to the 1968 Black power activism at the 1968 Olympic Games; (ii) the 1970s, players strikes over pension benefits in baseball, sportspeople giving voice to anti-war protests, and confronting the scourge of racism; (iii) the 1980s, boycott of Olympic games in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; (iv) the 1990s, which drew upon the strength of sport in ending the apartheid era; (v) the first decade of the 21st century saw, and the advent of sport for development being recognised as a new social movement and an enabler of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Kidd, 2008); and Australian athletes calling out injustices against First Nation Peoples; (vi) the second decade of the 21st century saw Ethiopian marathon runners protesting against the treatment of Oromo people; athletes tacking the knee in protest against the treatment of African-Americans in the face of police brutality and Australian Rules footballers suing, clubs and the league, over racism, while (vii) the 2020s have seen organisations such as the Centre for Sport and Human Rights advocate for continued freedom of expression in and through sport as set out in international human rights standard.
5. Sport enabled outcomes are also evident in sportspeople acting as advocates and activists in environment and health focused campaigns. Athletes have become a more central mainstream presence, whilst at the same time such campaigns are being more publicly challenged by, for example, Executive Orders exercised by a newly elected Trump administration in the USA. The right to health was established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The sports community also needs a healthy planet to survive – those engaging in sport are dependent on clean air, and water, food security, and many nature-based resources for recreation, to train for mental and physical peak fitness, and to perform. These needs and rights are strongly aligned making for a powerful alliance.
6. Activism through sport is not new but what is new and keeps changing is the context and times that we live in and the challenges that this brings (O’Neil, Dickson, Strobel, et al 2023). Orr’s (2025) review provides insights into the motivations and barriers that athletes face when deciding to engage on climate change issues whether as an insider or outsider and because of the hypocrisy trap of sports impact on the climate.
7. The sporting world contains numerous underlying tensions that have historically supported progressive agendas change. Athlete activism manifests across several spectrums: from moderate reform to radical transformation, from ideologically driven to pragmatically focused initiatives, and from individual athlete statements to coordinated collective movements. Understanding where particular actions fall along these continuums helps explain varying degrees of impact and reception.
8. Crucially, effective reform, whether evolutionary or revolutionary in nature, requires a sophisticated grasp of the continuously shifting local, national and international pressures that shape our current moment. These dynamic fault lines create both opportunities for meaningful change and obstacles that activists must navigate strategically to achieve their goals.
9. As sport activates for positive change in our communities, it must also get it’s own house in order by, for example, making changes from the inside to address sports significant carbon footprint. This includes actively addressing greenwashing and sportswashing at major tournaments through sponsorship scrutiny and greater transparency on impacts of stadium construction, tournament travel and consumerism ( Reid, et al 2024).
Planetary Health and Activists from Sport
10. Recent trends show a surge in athletes who are passionate about planetary health issues (Tabibi, 2024). People such as Leonard Fournette from Football; Megan Rapinoe from soccer; Naomi Osaka from Tennis; and Innes Fitzgerald from Athletics to name but a few. Their advocacy and activism relates to causes such as climate change, plastic pollution and wildlife conservation. They have influenced their own sports and teamed up with environmental organisations, companies, and other influencers to amplify their impact. Impact that has resulted in raising awareness, influencing policy and inspiring others. It was athletes that carried a message of the need for change in the run up to COP 26 with their Dear Leaders of the World call to action.
11. While the world should not rely on athlete and grassroots sport activists for mounting a challenge to systems they should be recognised and acknowledged more for the impact created. This is not, to use Marxist terminology, falsely conscious activism. This advocacy represents genuine engagement with pressing global issues , demonstrating sport’s capacity to serve as a powerful platform for meaningful social and environmental change.
What difference then can sport make to enabling Planetary Health?
12. Sport plays a crucial strategic role in achieving planetary health by transcending social, economic, gender, and geographic differences, providing equitable and inclusive health opportunities for individuals across all life stages. As the nature of disease changes due to the impacts of the planetary crisis, and the health metrics worsen, sport as a tool can enable intentionally planned health outcomes for individuals with physical illnesses, severe mental disorders, traumatic experiences, adverse childhood events, and postnatal depression, and positively impacts vulnerable groups such as veterans, people with disabilities, marginalized communities, displaced persons, homeless individuals, and incarcerated youth. In extraordinary situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, sport supported the physical resilience of healthcare workers and the broader public, highlighting its extensive social applicability.
13. Sport can also contribute significantly to planetary health by promoting active travel modes such as walking, running, and cycling. This has a triple health win. It addresses the issue of insufficient physical activity, which affects approximately 31% of the global population and contributes to the reduction of the estimated 3 million deaths annually ( while significantly decreasing the risk of major noncommunicable diseases, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, and depression, thus alleviating burdens on healthcare systems). It also contributes to reducing air pollution (PM2.5) and carbon emissions by replacing private car use ( fuelled by GHG emitting fossil fuel) with active travel modes. And it contributes to improved societal services by fostering the development of sustainable urban transport systems and further illustrating sport’s synergistic role in human health and environmental protection.
14. Compared to individual-level efforts, mega sporting events have broader transformative impacts on planetary health, for good or ill. By leveraging the opportunity presented by the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the French government invested approximately €1.5 billion into the ecological restoration and water quality improvement of the Seine River (Nicklin, 2024). Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadan noted that without the Paris 2024 Olympics, the Seine’s water quality improvements could have taken another decade. Following restoration, the Seine has seen the return of 36 species of fish, as well as jellyfish, crustaceans, and amphibians (Kryvoshei, 2025). Three swimming areas along the river will officially open in July 2025, ending a century-long swimming ban, providing new spaces for physical activity, enhancing public wellbeing, and improving urban liveability. This demonstrates that sporting events can serve as powerful drivers of transformative change, effectively advancing ecological governance and significantly improving human health, thereby comprehensively supporting planetary health goals.
15. For sporting events to serve as genuine drivers of planetary health , they require fundamental reimagining. This could include mandatory carbon neutrality, investment in renewable energy infrastructure, prioritising existing venues over new construction, and establishing binding environmental governance, mega-events can move beyond isolated success stories to become consistent catalysts for ecological restoration and climate action.
What contribution can sport make as part of a broader nature-based solution?
16. Nature-based solutions seek to protect, manage, and restore ecosystems in a manner which benefits both ecosystems as well as people (United Nations Environment Programme 2022). Sport can play a role in nature-based solutions due to its capacity for public advocacy as well as the dynamic of the relationship that sport has with the natural environment. Sport’s participation in nature-based solutions can help to secure its own future as it faces threats from climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
17. Among cultural activities, sport has a special quality in its ability to relate to people regardless of their geographies, languages, religions, and cultures. Many people view sport as a role model for human health, achievement through adversity, and building bridges across cultures and peoples. Athletes, teams, media, and other sport organisations have the capacity to communicate and educate large audiences of individuals ready to listen and eager to learn. Whether it is your favourite team or the Olympic Games, if sport tells its public that caring for nature is essential it is likely that the sporting public will help amplify the message.
18. Sport has a fundamental relationship with the natural environment, currently threatened by climate change, that can be bolstered and protected via participation in nature-based solutions. Sport could do more to lead the way in developing and showcasing nature-based solutions. For example, coastal golf courses could return out-of-bounds land to a more natural state via replanting native vegetation to better protect themselves while combatting coastal erosion and providing habitat for wildlife.
Call to Action
19. Insight, innovation and impact come from bringing people and knowledge together and addressing the challenges of our time which require radical and creative collaborations. The challenges facing our planet demand nothing less, bringing diverse voices and expertise to generate further insight, innovation and impact. The sporting world stands uniquely positioned to catalyse this transformation, but realising this potential requires co-ordinated action across multiple levels.
20. The nations of the world that have drawn back from overseas development assistance must reinstate the 0.7% GDP target for humanitarian reasons and also in recognition of the interconnectedness of our global destiny. Fundamentally this needs to be reframed around the Planetary Health Agenda, redirecting international aid towards interventions that simultaneously address environmental degradation, climate change, and human health and wellbeing inequities across interconnected global systems.
21. Sports federations, NGOs and multi-lateral international organisations who have a sports remit must commit to achieving Planetary Health Outcomes and the International Olympic Committee must further enable its Charters in a further commitment to environmental sustainability.
22. There remains a need for a hub that could serve as a platform for the creation of generative shared intelligence (GSI) that would create a global collaborative space for example, for policymakers, scientists, health professionals, environmental experts and other niche specialist stakeholders. The outcome of the collaboration would include knowledge exchange resulting from the co-creation of the development of innovative solutions addressing planetary health challenges and sport should have a place at the table.
23. A hub’s core functions could include focusing on knowledge generation, synthesis and praxis from conducting interdisciplinary research on the complex interplay between sport, climate change, biodiversity loss, and human health, with a particular emphasis on their geo-political, geo-economic, and socio-environmental dimensions. This research could contribute to informing the development of frameworks for assessing the health impacts of global change and identifying opportunities for intervention.
24. It would aim to influence policy and practice by developing evidence-based recommendations for integrating sport and planetary health considerations into national and international policies. It could leverage data analytics and technology to develop tools for monitoring the health of planetary systems and assessing the impact of policy interventions in and through sport.
25. This vision requires both global coordination and local leadership. Institutions , including the Academy of Sport, at Edinburgh contributing to and leading Public Health Diplomacy through activating existing networks and partnerships with, for example the various networks across the world promoting planetary health, The Sports Ecology Group, Olympic 365 and the Edinburgh Future Institute’s MSc Planetary Health could make a further contribution. There is a need to continue to listen to and learn from Global Health and Academy of Sport activists such as Corinne Reid, Liz Grant and Stuart Murray who have consistently argued for a more compassionate world (Grant, L., Reid, C et al 2022) while putting ethics at the centre of what must be done not just in terms of the choices made but strengthening the process of making ethical choices works when confronted with ever-changing circumstances and complex contexts.
Concluding Remark
26. The relationship between sport, planetary health and activism could be one of the most timely needed progressive impulses of our time that recognises and responds to what the worlds of sport could offer and what our many communities need. It needs to be effectively co-ordinated, and it needs to develop scale to ensure that needs-based solutions help more communities and people locally and globally more often. The question is not whether sport can contribute to planetary health , but whether we will seize the moment to harness its untapped transformative potential.
References and Resources.
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