Going for green (London Olympics)

London aims to host the most sustainable Olympics ever in 2012, but there are a number of reasons why we should be sceptical
Graeme Hayes
The Guardian,
Wednesday July 2, 2008

Behind the fence that surrounds the Olympic site in east London, work is under way, preparing the ground for the "best Olympics yet". But being best won't simply be about medals, architecture, revenue and spectators. London 2012 also aspires to host the "most sustainable" games ever. For the organising committee, Locog, this means carefully managing the wildlife habitats of the Lower Lea Valley and establishing environmentally sensitive carbon, energy and waste plans. It also means sourcing materials and supplies responsibly - and, where possible, locally.
For London, sustainability is an important goal. As a global showpiece event, the Olympics can promote an environmentally positive message to a television audience of more than 3 billion people. But is this simply greenwash? Despite London's sustainability plan, it was also the largest, the most costly and the most complex of the credible bids for the 2012 games. Paris and Madrid offered cheaper, more compact, more environmentally focused bids. And Athens, Beijing and Vancouver have all attracted fierce criticism for their poor environmental records.
It is now a regular occurrence for host cities to promote their Olympics as the greenest to date. In the mid-1990s, following two decades of games punctuated by terrorism, public debt, political boycotts, corruption, doping scandals and, at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, massive environmental damage, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared the environment to be the "third dimension" of the games - alongside sport and culture.
The 2000 games in Sydney was a watershed, being environmentally sensitive on pollution control, brownfield site clearance, species conservation and energy efficiency. London is pioneering decentralised energy systems, and the Olympic park will be powered by a combined cooling, heat and power plant fuelled by woodchip and natural gas.
The promotion of "green Olympics" has increased as the emphasis has shifted from host nations to host cities. Hosts want the Olympics to encourage global capital to "touch down" in their redeveloped city, creating jobs and growth. Globally competitive cities want to project themselves as environmental modernisers.
But the Olympic message is also that the games have a positive effect on host cities - and, by extension, host nations. Hosting the games can accelerate the introduction of environmental considerations across public policy. The games thus work as a lever for better environmental stewardship.
Yet we have a duty to remain sceptical about these claims, on three counts. First, because the environmental initiatives promoted by the games are not necessarily additional measures. Staging the Olympics might improve coordination and promotion, but often civic and market pressures ensure new measures are introduced anyway. London's decentralised energy plan responds to a more pressing climate change agenda than the hosting of a sporting event. The redevelopment of the Lea Valley is just a part of the Thames Gateway project, and would have gone ahead without the games.
Second, as the organisation of the 2012 games staggers from budgetary crisis to budgetary crisis, we need to ask: which measures are most expendable? Locog has ambitious plans for habitat protection and waste management, for example; the environmental impact of the games depends on maintaining the funding of these programmes.
Third, there is a glaring incompatibility between the games and the core tenets of environmentalism. While environmentalism is based on the three Rs - reduce, re-use, recycle - the games are based on the Big More: more spectators, more sales, more jobs, more tourists, more growth, more infrastructure. This brings enormous contradictions.
Take the idea that holding the games in highly polluted Beijing will steer China towards environmental and political modernisation. On one hand, through its Olympic partnership, General Electric is promoting "ecomagination" solutions to water purification and renewable energy; on the other, the games are the centrepiece of massive and accelerated industrial and infrastructural development. The beautiful "bird's nest" Olympic stadium is being built by migrant labour, and the UN estimates that 1.5 million people will have been forcibly evicted in Beijing to make way for the Olympics.
In Athens, nearly all the new venues for the 2004 games have now fallen into disrepair, with no sustainable use. Greenpeace and WWF produced damning reports on the environmental impacts of the Athens games. Criticisms include irreversible damage to wetlands and coastal areas, extensive encroachment on natural and agricultural landscapes, and no improvement in waste, water or energy management.
The Olympics is event staging as consumption-driven economic expansion, pushed by media, political and corporate interest coalitions and underwritten by public debt. The impact of the games is typically greatest on the poorest and most deprived sections of the urban population, who are forced to relocate by construction projects, and are priced out by post-games gentrification. And games-related investment further reduces the ability of public authorities to assure key welfare functions.
London has already attracted substantial criticism on forced rehousing issues - if not to the extent of, say, Barcelona, Seoul, Athens or Beijing. If the 2012 games adhere to the model established in industrial democracies over the last decade, we should also expect increases in surveillance and control, the securitisation and commercialisation of public space as the IOC protects its multinational sponsors, and the reduction of civil liberties and democratic accountability.
It will be a key challenge for Locog to manage the substantial carbon footprint created by the event. The Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, backed by environmental NGOs, including WWF and BioRegional, provides authoritative oversight. But carbon targets so far have proved to be less than ambitious, and London has recently confirmed it has no plans to make the games carbon neutral, despite developing best practice elsewhere. The plan to offset international travel emissions - by supporting projects in developing nations - is practically and ethically controversial.
Whether we see the Olympics' environmental message as an alibi for neoliberal corporate promotion depends in part on how we assess the legacy of the games. In Beijing, Vancouver and London, the next four years will provide an acid test of whether we should take the Olympic message of sustainable environmental politics seriously.
· Graeme Hayes is senior lecturer in languages and social sciences at Aston University.