The World Cup kicked off in Qatar, a contested nation whose egregious human rights record was ignored in their successful bid to host. Before kickoff, the FIFA board released the following statement, the full version of which included only peripheral mentions of worker’s rights in the construction of World Cup stadiums:
For the past few years FIFPRO has worked with Amnesty International, BWI, national player unions and individual players to push for employment and human rights reforms in Qatar and achieve what has been touted as a World Cup legacy.
…
The World Cup must be truly global and be shared amongst all communities, cultures and people. Without genuine human rights standards and genuine inclusivity, this is impossible.
In future, the players, who make the World Cup – and other football tournaments – what they are, must have a say in when and where these events take place, and under which conditions. The shortcomings of this World Cup relating to human rights must be a catalyst to pursue the positive global impact our game can achieve.
FIFA
The merits and demerits of FIFA’s statement (and preceding rationale in having selected Qatar) can be debated, but their acknowledgment underscores the unpleasant dichotomy of a major event – one designed to unite the world – built on the backs of marginalized people.
Plainly: the infrastructure built to house this quadrennial sporting event came at a human cost that flies in the face of what the World Cup represents. Further, this human cost was obscured under the veil of sustainability.
Labor conditions and the human cost of sport
Qatar is hot. Construction labor is hard. Put the two together with a lack of proper governance and quality-assured systems, and people die. In the early years after winning the bid to host, on average 600 laborers per year were dying working on Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure.
At present, estimates of migrant worker deaths top 6,500. Certainly, these deaths weren’t all from working on World Cup stadiums directly; the figure includes deaths related to infrastructure projects throughout the country. But the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) argues that these 6,500 deaths were a downstream effect of the event at large:
It needs to be remembered that the infrastructure programme in Qatar is entirely built around the delivery date of the World Cup in Qatar.
Tim Noonan, director of campaigns at the ITUC
Returning to FIFA’s statement, their human rights comments focused on gay rights and women’s rights, causes sexier to Western audiences and those that players and fans have been most vocal about.
There was zero mention of all those who died building the infrastructure allowing the event to take place, but instead a cursory mention of institutional failings related to migrant workers:
A Migrant Workers Centre has not been established, no World Cup fund exists today to compensate workers and their families, trade unions remain forbidden,
FIFA
Sustainability requires more than Green construction
Of the eight stadiums constructed in Qatar, seven were new builds and one was renovated from existing infrastructure. Superficially, the construction of these stadiums has been lauded as the “greenest sporting event in history.”
Before one can begin to unpick this statement, it’s worth reflecting on what green actually means. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a certification framework governing green builds and the most widely used system worldwide to rate the greenness of infrastructure.
The proprietor of LEED Certification, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), defines green building in part as minimizing the negative effects of the infrastructure on both the surrounding natural environment as well as on the people using the infrastructure.
In practice, it builds upon the classical building design goals of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. By enlarging the scope in this way, green building provides project teams a more robust framework to incorporate the three pillars of sustainability (people, planet and prosperity) in their projects.
UCGBC
And therein lies the crux: the three pillars of sustainability, which are the environment, the economy and the society. So it follows that for infrastructure to be truly green, it must support all three pillars of sustainability. To focus exclusively on the environmental component is to whitewash the entire paradigm.
Back to Qatar’s so-called green World Cup infrastructure.
Green at a human cost is not sustainable
In the arid peninsula of Qatar’s harsh climate, stadium design capitalized on available natural resources, such as solar energy and desalination. This follows at least one of the tenets of green design, mitigating negative environmental impact on the immediate environment through energy efficiency and water conservation.
But can environmental sustainability exist in the bosom of natural resource pillaging? Was the use of solar and desalination a mirage to distract from the infrastructure realities? After all, neither the sun nor the sea are the natural resources Qatar is renowned for. That distinct honor goes to petroleum and natural gas.
The architecture firm responsible for stadium design articulates their governing design goal as:
To create the best buildings in quality, delivery schedule and price and to develop quality architecture in execution as well as design to provide tangible and marketable value to their clients.
Fenwick Iribarren Architects
Clients are mentioned. But humans are not. (Interestingly, neither is sustainability nor green design.) The architecture firm hailed in particular for stadium 974 as a 40,000-seat “milestone in innovation, design and sustainability” seems to have won that accolade on the exclusion of one of the three pillars of sustainability: the social pillar (and, arguably, the environmental pillar).
Good marketing does not equate to the genuine manifestation of sustainability principles.
Fenwick Iribarren is only one player in the broader infrastructure scheme but reflects a broader issue. Despite FIFA’s claims of “a fully carbon neutral World Cup,” the Qatar World Cup is having a deeply problematic carbon footprint that flies in the face of Qatar’s lofty promises.
Modularity is only as good as its reuse
Stadium 974 includes 974 shipping containers in its construction. Marketed as a symbolic Lego kit of sorts, the idea is that this temporary stadium will be deconstructed upon the conclusion of the event and available for reconstruction at future events.
An interesting idea, certainly. Modularity is a sustainable trend of the future that, in principle, supports a circular economy of conservation, reuse and recycling. But there are two arguments that suggest stadium 974’s concept may be a gimmick unlikely to take hold:
- Will the stadium components actually be deconstructed and reconstructed elsewhere, as suggested? And,
- Did the modular components serve a structural or otherwise functional necessity to begin with?
One of the privileges of being a World Cup host is control over infrastructure lifecycles and management of the stadiums. The use of shipping containers is cute; the World Cup, after all, reflects the maturity of globalization.
And any nudge towards full building lifecycle circularity is good, though it will be a wait-and-see as to whether or not the deconstruction and reuse of stadium 974 come to fruition in any form or location.
Further, the degree to which these containers are integral to the structural integrity of the stadium, however, versus being an ephemeral distraction from the unacceptable industrial health and safety violations used in the construction of these venues, remains unclear. The containers themselves, however, are the aesthetic focal point of stadium 974, suggesting more form over substance.
Sport as the great unifier, but only if supported by policy
The World Cup is a global sporting event that is supposed to transcend differences. Bringing communities and nations together, eschewing institutional and personal politics, such events are intended to unite, not divide.
Purpose-built infrastructure should reflect the values of the event it houses. And host governance should both facilitate and regulate the implementation of those values.
Sport is one of the few great unifiers that brings people together across social, racial, religious and political divides. Sporting values are human values. But with the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, vulnerable communities were subjected to horrid working conditions and non-existent industrial health and safety governance under the veil of green infrastructure.
May this antithesis of sustainability conjure FIFA’s words into reality:
The shortcomings of this World Cup relating to human rights must be a catalyst to pursue the positive global impact our game can achieve.
FIFA