Play the Game
April 16, 2015

by Stine Alvad

In a move to enhance awareness about and action against corruption in sport, Transparency International has launched a new initiative named ‘Corruption in Sport’ that collects and distributes knowledge and promotes collaboration on sports integrity.

Transparency International (TI) regularly publishes a ‘Global Corruption Report’ about a certain subject that they find to be of specific importance and relevant in the fight against corruption. The next Global Corruption Report by TI will focus on corruption in sport.

In the run up to the publication of this report, set for late this year, TI has opened a website as a “space for new analysis, commentary and recommendations by leading voices in the field of sports governance to strengthen transparency, accountability and participation,” writes TI.

Last week, the first content was released and it includes an interview with Play the Game’s international director, Jens Sejer Andersen, in which he explains his view on how sports corruption has gone from being something that was hardly ever talked about into being in the news daily. According to  Andersen, this shift occurred around 2010 when FIFA awarded the 2018 and 2022 to Russia and Qatar respectively.

“By doing so FIFA alienated three very big bidding countries with huge international clout and a critical press: the US, Australia and the UK. This ensured that the landslide was moving,” Andersen says in the interview, in which he also repeats his call for more support for whistleblowers and investigative sports journalists. Read the interview here: Q&A with Jens Sejer Andersen: What made corruption a hot topic in sports

Governance practices have not kept pace
Among the other contributions to this initiative is also an article written by professor Roger Pielke Jr., in which he outlines the history of international sports organisations, a history that offers explanations to why transparency and accountability can be so difficult for international sports organisations to overcome.

According to Pielke, there is a historic reason for why good governance in sports organisations is so hard to come by.

“Sports organisations have come to ressemble corporations and other international institutions, but their governance practices, not only to address issues of corruption but beyond, have not kept pace,” writes Pielke.

“The vast amount of money flowing through these bodies, coupled with the financially significant decisions that they make, often at the highest level of politics and in the absence of best practices in place for government, creates settings amenable to corrupt practices.” Read more …

Roger Pielke, Jr. quoted in the news

Where’s the Evidence? Labour Puts Climate Change at Heart of Manifesto
by Donna Rachel Edmunds

Breitbart
April 13, 2015

Labour has put tackling climate change at the centre of its election manifesto, promising one million new green jobs, setting targets for Britain to have carbon free energy by 2030 and pushing for global net zero carbon emissions by the latter half of the century. But claims that climate change is causing adverse weather made in the manifesto contradict the findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

With just over three weeks to go until polling day in the general election, Labour has taken to the set of Coronation Street, a soap opera set in the north of England to launch its manifesto. Central to the document is tackling climate change, which Labour says is “an economic necessity and the most important thing we must do for our children, our grandchildren and future generations.”

In particular, climate change is “at the heart” of Labour’s foreign policy. The party pledged to seek “an ambitious agreement on climate change at the UNFCCC conference in Paris, in December,” where they will “make the case for ambitious emissions targets for all countries, strengthened every five years on the basis of a scientific assessment of the progress towards the below two degree goal.

“And we will push for a goal of net zero global emissions in the second half of this century, for transparent and universal rules for measuring, verifying and reporting emissions, and for an equitable deal in which richer countries provide support to poorer nations in combatting climate change.”

They believe that this is crucial, as climate change is already having an impact on the world’s weather, delivering floods in Britain, droughts in California and typhoons in the Philippines. “The world is already seeing the effects we once thought only future generations would experience,” they say.

Their justification for the policy comes from work done by the IPCC in presenting the possible threats of climate change.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made clear that if the world is going to hold warming below two degrees (the internationally agreed goal), global emissions need to peak in around 2020, and then decline rapidly to reach net zero emissions by the second half of this century. The weaker the action now, the more rapid and costly the reductions will need to be later,” Labour says.

But the IPCC has also admitted that there is no evidence to suggest that climate change is driving more extreme weather. Back in 2013, Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, compiled a list of key statements from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report on climate change.

He found that, in their report, the IPCC states: “There is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with climate variables [other than heat] since the mid-20th century. Read more …

Max Boykoff quoted in Climate Central article on climate science and air travel.

Climate Central
April 7, 2015

by Brian Kahn

Globally, air travel accounts for 2.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If air travel were a country, it would be roughly on par with Germany in emissions. And if air travel by climate scientists were a city, it would be a one-stoplight outpost.

In other words, climate scientists curtailing their air travel would make a microscopic dent in reducing emissions, but a new paper argues they should do it anyway, because their influence goes far beyond numbers.

“It’s a credibility issue,” Corinne Le Quéré, a researcher at the Tyndall Centre, said in an interview via Skype. “We’re trying to support a change in culture.”

Le Quéré, who authored a recent paper on decarbonizing climate research, starting with flying, said most climate scientists are acutely aware of their carbon footprint but that flying has become part of their routine, particularly for criss-crossing the globe in connecting with colleagues at far-flung institutions.

Of course, it’s not only climate scientists who are flying more and more each year. From 2005 to 2013, annual air travel grew from 2 billion from 3 billion passengers.

Had Le Quéré opted for an in-person interview about her work, the round-trip flight from London to New York would have emitted 3.4 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), two and a half times the annual emissions of the average person living in India.

While a few thousand scientists ditching their frequent flyer cards is a drop in the carbon emissions bucket, Le Quéré argues that those scientists carry a greater burden than the general public to consider their own emissions. That’s because they’re acutely aware of the risks climate change poses as well as the solutions needed.

Eric Holthaus, a writer at Slate who famously gave up flying after reading the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, said if scientists lead by example, it can help make climate change and its solutions more tangible.

“Climate change is a more scientific or abstract than a lot of problems that are top 10 political issues. It helps to have visible leadership in the way people can relate to,” he said.

Max Boykoff, a researcher at the Center for Science, Technology and Policy at the University of Colorado, said it goes even one step further than simply relatability.

“Their [climate scientists] actions may have limited discernible influence in terms of ‘bending the curve’ on emissions, but their efforts to ‘walk the talk’ have tremendous symbolic value,” he said. “Moreover, because this has become such a politically charged and high-stakes issue, their actions are scrutinized much more than those who aren’t studying the problem.” Read more …