For a long time, Qatar had been one of the most toxic countries globally because of the pollution and lack of environmental safety and sustainability. To combat this, the Qatari government has been taking steps towards protecting and sustaining the region’s natural resources. On December 2nd, 2010, Qatar was announced to be the country in charge of hosting the 2022 World Cup. This led to the investment and implementation of more sustainable modes of construction. The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) is the company responsible for organizing the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. They have been a pillar in providing cutting edge technologies that promote sustainability. This emphasis on caring for the environment is evident in stadiums’ sustainable development through recycling and their approaches to lowering Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.
The SC aims to create stadiums in a sustainable way to decrease their carbon footprint. The SC intends to deliver “a fully carbon-neutral FIFA World Cup 2022… by implementing leading sustainable building standards, waste and water management practices and low-emission solutions”.[1] This is interesting when it comes to the environmental humanities because the carbon footprint is significantly reduced for such a large event and the lasting impact these stadiums will have. The stadiums can be reused for different venues, and parts of the stadium will be taken apart and sent to other countries for their football ventures. They plan on increasing the percentage of waste recycled in Qatar by 2022. All the stadiums have been constructed in a way to maintain waste management. They are promoting a new eco-friendly lifestyle entirely, a lifestyle focused on recycling and living in a way that is considered environmentally friendly.
The SC will lower GHG emissions by measuring and mitigating the emissions through low-carbon solutions. They have partnered up with organizations to create public transportations like the Doha Metro and Lusail Tram, which all have exits near the stadiums to ensure cars’ carbon footprint are minimized. They have also created a large scale solar power plant for Qatar instead of relying on gas. Another project they have honed in on is the Green Car initiative with the government to promote electric cars for a less polluted environment. They have also partnered up with local carbon reduction projects alongside their own SC Tree Nursery. The SC’s Tree Nursery was created to absorb any remaining GHGs in the atmosphere. The trees are planted near the stadiums, watered with treated wastewater to recycle and maintain sustainability.
Concerning literature on the Environmental Humanities (EH), I believe the way the SC has presented its ideas relates to a specific position posed by Greg Garrard in his book Ecocriticism. In his chapter “Positions”, Garrard discusses a variety of different sub-schools in EH. I will mainly focus on Environmentalism as that is the position that fits the SC’s stance the best. He describes Environmentalists as people concerned with environmental issues but wish to continue progressing and improving their living standards. With that being said, the traditional route of Environmentalism is a position critiqued by Garrard that it does not work. It is the path most developed nations have been following for decades, yet we are still facing an environmentally charged apocalyptic crisis. His critique is that it is widespread and mainstream, and thus, in terms of ethos, it is often deemed shallow. The government and the SC are taking their time developing technological solutions to the environmental crisis, thus combatting a shallow ethos’s ideas. The SC works on training its employees and the workers they have for constructing the stadium infrastructure on sustainability. The green stadiums that Qatar is creating will change Qatar’s label of being a polluted country with little to no understanding of sustainability to an environmentally friendly country.
The country will continue to develop and improve the standard of living, all while taking care of the environment. However, this raises specific questions: What will happen to this environmentalist movement once the Qatar World Cup 2022 ends?
Bibliography:
“FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022TM Sustainability Strategy.” Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy. Accessed September 20, 2020. https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/fifa-world-cup-qatar-2022tm-sustainability-strategy.pdf?cloudid=p2axokh26lzaafloutgs.
Garrard, Greg. “Positions.” Essay. In Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2012.
[1] “FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022TM Sustainability Strategy.” Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy. Accessed September 20, 2020. https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/fifa-world-cup-qatar-2022tm-sustainability-strategy.pdf?cloudid=p2axokh26lzaafloutgs.
