Sports for nature

Sports for Nature Summary of 2023 Signatory Reports

Sports for Nature Framework

The Sports for Nature Framework was created to tap into sports’ enormous potential to take on ambitious goals and drive positive change. The Framework aims to deliver transformative, nature positive action across sports by 2030 and beyond, enabling sports to champion nature and contribute to its protection and restoration.

Sport and biodiversity

This guide is designed to help decision makers understand these potential impacts, and to present options for mitigating them, as well as for maximising opportunities to use sport as a way to promote and enhance biodiversity conservation.

Sports for Nature: Setting a baseline

Developed by the UN Environment Programme with the support of the International Olympic Committee, along with Loughborough University and GRID Arendal, the handbook investigates and highlights the urgency, dependency and impact of sport on nature, demonstrating the opportunities already underway – with guidance and case studies to inspire and innovate.

Sports and urban biodiversity

Investing in nature and nature-based solutions is an important pathway to address the current ecological crisis. The loss of biodiversity, with around one million animal and plant species threatened with extinction, is putting at risk our economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide. Diverse and innovative measures are needed to reverse this decline and to restore healthy ecosystems.

Mitigating biodiversity impacts of sports events

These guidelines focus on the often complex links between biodiversity and sport, and highlight that sports events can also benefit biodiversity. Each event offers an opportunity to raise public awareness of the value of nature and influence attitudes towards biodiversity and its conservation. These guidelines provide an overview of the issues and risks.

Mitigating biodiversity impacts of new sports venues

This report offers in-depth guidance on how to integrate biodiversity considerations in the development of a new venue or a temporary facility, including five checklists covering all aspects from the early planning stage and site selection to the decommissioning.

From fields to forests: Sports’ Role in Biodiversity Protection