NEW DELHI: TERI School of Advanced Studies (TERI SAS), under its youth engagement and empowerment initiative, kicked-off a one-day development program on Sports and Sustainability here Wednesday.
The program aimed at engaging youth, especially, sports persons, trainers, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, researchers, analysts and experts to promote a sustainable understanding and practice of sports for addressing sustainable development. The workshop was designed to focus on comprehending inter-linkages between sustainability and sports along with their current challenges, policy lessons and developmental impact, especially in spaces which stimulate learning and collaboration towards ‘greening’ sports to attain sustainability towards SDGs, and environmental protection. The programme received encouragement and support from Goalden Times and SportVolt as knowledge partners.
In her address, Dr Leena Srivastava, vice-chancellor, TERI SAS emphasized: “Sports, at its core, symbolises sustainability. It promotes healthy living, is inclusive — in itself and across society, and provides livelihood opportunities to many around it! However, sports can also drive sustainable development, and its awareness, at a much wider scale – from gender equality to resources management to carbon responsibility. The opportunities for designing responsible sports are immense.”
The program began with an inspiring inaugural session with speakers sharing their experiences, vision and hope for making sports accessible and effective as a medium for encouraging development and sustainability.
Today, there is clearly a need for governments as well as private enterprises and institutions to create policies and mechanisms for integration of sports with mainstream and alternative modes of education, livelihoods and social justice. This will ensure that sports does not become a mere source of entertainment but actually brings about positive changes in the society, especially supporting the SDGs under various categories.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Fund supports the contribution of sports in ensuring peace and the promotion of respect for people regardless of caste, class, gender, race and being differently-abled. This has also led to the development of a toolkit on mainstreaming SDGs in sports which was discussed in depth at the workshop to explore how sports can play a constructive role in building a sustainable future.
The UN SDG toolkit states that:
Sports is a cost-effective and powerful tool for promoting important human values such as respect for rules and for others, teamwork, discipline, diversity, hospitality and empathy (SDG 5, 16)
Sports helps girls and women build self-esteem and develop skills needed to become equal participants and leaders in their various communities (SDG 5, 16)
The power of sports in social inclusion can create awareness about social inclusion for persons with disabilities (SDG 1, 5)
Acknowledging that sports is a resource and carbon intensive activity, Dr Anandajit Goswami, Fellow, Management Development Programme, Coordinator, TERI SAS, emphasized: “The aim is to create awareness amongst not only youth but sports academies, sportspersons, and sports authorities also to achieve carbon neutrality in sports so that the management, up-keeping, and the operational process of the game is climate and carbon neutral, in addition to confirming other goals as marked by the United Nations. Right from water, energy to all natural resources management, and waste management, sports should have sustainability as the basic backbone so that it becomes and transforms to a tool for all-round social, economic, ecological and environmental development, and not its degradation.”
Stressing on educating and empowering the youth through sports, Suheil Tandon, founder and director, Pro Sport Development, mentioned that today there is a gap in global organisations and committees having very few sportspersons as decision makers. He said that the need of the hour is to generate values through sports in a fun way, starting at grassroots level and as a part of the school curriculum at the same time involving youth to become change-makers of this initiative.
In his speech, Vivek Gaur, Strategic Partnerships manager – Goal, Naz Foundation, emphasized the significance of gender inclusion in sports, especially, teaching life skills such as communication with team-mates, confidence building and leadership development among young girls. He also laid stress on SDGs and how a simple sport such as Netball can be used to address almost all of 17 SDGs including providing a stage for partnerships to focus on sustainability.
The workshop plan included focused sessions to increase awareness around the challenges and the need to invest in capacity building for sustainability in sports.The session included Grassroots sports talent identification & development by Kshitij Tewari, CEO, SportVolt;Sports as a Practice to Attain Sustainability by Chavi Asrani, PhD Scholar, a National and State Swimmer; Sports Digitalisation and the future by Anshul Bagai, Director, Academy of Sports Science and Research Management; Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Addressing Sports and Sustainability by Col. Prakash Tewari (Retd.) Consultant – CSR; Esports and Sustainability by Lokesh Suji, Director, Esports Federation of India & VP-Asian Esports Federation and Sports Analytics and Sustainability by Indranath Mukherjee, Head, Strategic Analytics, AXA XL India.
The one-day development program on Sports and Sustainability is a part of Climate Jambooree, an umbrella programme launched in 2018 by Minister of State for Urban Development Hardeep Singh Puri.
