Briefing Note – Climate & FIFA Saudi Arabia 2034 World Cup

What is happening?

On December 11, FIFA will meet to designate the hosts for the  2030 and 2034 World Cup. The only bidder for the 2034 World Cup is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (thanks to intervention in the bidding process by FIFA).

How can we think about the pollution this World Cup would cause?

Quantifying the vast scale of the impact of the planned Saudi World Cup is challenging, but it can be helpful to think of it as a much larger version of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar which we know did huge direct harm to people and planet as well facilitating broader damage. 

Harm through environmental pollution

The 2022 tournament caused huge fossil fuel pollution. FIFA’s claims of ‘carbon neutrality’ were based solely on “creative accounting” and ruled as misleading by regulators, after a case was brought forward by NGOs including Fossil Free Football. Experts believe the tournament to have caused “way over 10 million tonnes” of carbon pollution; more than some competing countries like Uruguay emit in a year for a tournament lasting less than a month. The main sources of pollution were infrastructure construction and supporter travel; a brief look at the plans for the Saudi World Cup make clear that the footprint from construction, operations and (air) travel would be far higher. 

The Qatar World Cup was the most polluting event in history, but Saudi 2034 would be on a much bigger scale, deepening the impacts of the climate crisis to which football is hugely vulnerable

Harm through facilitating Saudi regime power building (sportswashing)

Aside from the ruinous direct impacts, the Qatar World Cup centred public attention on the co-opting of football by nation states to further their own interest, commonly referred to as sportswashing

This conversation often focused on repressive regimes ‘reputation laundering’ through sport. Using sport to protect or improve reputation may seem relatively benign, but this “soft power” is then used to achieve hard power goals with broad impacts. Mega events and wider association with football can be used to tell a certain story to billions (about your country, about the products your country sells) and to reach key decision makers through the popular association and premium benefits (VIP tickets, corporate boxes) a sport provides.

While Qatar might not have become more popular in places where its human rights abuses were widely highlighted, it was able to use the World Cup to present itself as a powerful, dynamic and prosperous country to be reckoned with on the global stage. This ‘brand building’ along with the access that football gave the Qataris to international decision makers, made it easier to conclude fossil fuel and military trade deals with countries like Germany, France and the U.K.  

This is why Russia’s state fossil fuel corporation, Gazprom sponsored Schalke 04 and continues to partner with Red Star Belgrade, two clubs on the trajectory of the Nord Stream and South Stream gas pipelines respectively. It’s also no coincidence that the leadership of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (owner of different sports competitions, clubs and part owner of Saudi Aramco and implicated in human rights abuses) recently met president-elect Trump at his favourite sporting event. 

No matter if held in London, Paris or Doha, mega sporting events wouldn’t happen if they didn’t further the interest of the host in pursuing broader objectives, but the nature of the Saudi regime’s activities domestically and internationally make this tournament especially harmful. Saudi Arabia will use the World Cup as another tool in its effort to influence the struggle over whether fossil fuels remain in the ground through international agreement or continue to be burnt at rates putting us on track for devastating heating

Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing strategy strengthens the hand of the regime in achieving goals that benefit itself but harm others, including: 

The hosting of the World Cup by Saudi Arabia would further empower an autocratic regime that is already well known for inflicting serious harm. Awarding it the hosting of the 2034 World Cup would give them a huge opportunity to scale their practices and  would inevitably lead to serious further damage to people and the planet over and above the tournament’s direct impacts. 

Further background information

  • In 2016, FIFA committed to measure, reduce and compensate the emissions associated with its World Cups. 
  • FIFA subsequently also committed to reducing its emissions by 50% by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2040 as part of the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework. This framework entails that it “undertake systematic efforts to promote greater environmental responsibility”, “reduce overall climate impact”, “educate for climate action”, promote sustainable and responsible consumption” and “advocate for climate action through communication”. 
  • In a message to COP26, FIFA President Gianni Infantino explained that World Cup bidders must have “stringent, robust measures in place to prioritise sustainability” while hosts must follow “key principles for sustainable event management and promote sustainable development”. Infantino also pledged that FIFA would ‘reduce its emissions to contribute to the Paris agreement’. Examples like the unsubstantiated and misleading ‘net-zero’ commitment of Qatar 2022, as found by the Swiss regulator, shows FIFA has so far prioritised PR over serious action.
  • 130+ players recently called on FIFA to drop its promotional partnership with Saudi state oil corporation Aramco. It seems likely this deal will extend to Saudi 2034 too, despite FIFA needing to breach its own commitments on climate to accommodate it. 
  • Like FIFA, Saudi Arabia is also closely tied to dubious carbon offset schemes, even as it expands fossil fuel production. Aramco is the largest customer in a carbon market whose ownership and executive overlaps significantly with its own. Investigation into the schemes found that “the majority of carbon credits purchased by Aramco to offset its emissions are connected to projects in which the effectiveness of carbon removal was overstated or discredited”. 
  • Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid used Aramco as an example of “world-leading initiatives to address its carbon footprint, including flaring reduction, carbon capture and storage, detection of methane leaks, and investments in solar and wind projects” but there are “significant issues with all of these methods”. The fact that Aramco’s only operating carbon capture and storage plant actually centres on using pumped carbon dioxide to retrieve more fossil fuels indicates where the company’s priorities lie. 
  • Recent analysis from the Carbon Majors database shows Saudi Aramco to be the third largest polluter globally and the largest state-owned fossil fuel producer. It has no meaningful plans to stop.
    • In March 2024, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said: “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas, and instead invest in them adequately, reflecting realistic demand assumptions.”
    • Saudi’s claims that the Kingdom is diversifying away from oil are dubious at best. Whilst Saudi Arabia is targeting 50% of energy from ‘clean’ sources by 2030, in 2021 the International Energy Agency (IEA) assessed just 0.3% of Saudi power came from renewables. In 2022 IRENA rated Saudi clean energy as 1% of the power mix.
  • In 2023 UN human rights experts warned of the ‘significant human rights impact Saudi Aramco and its financial backers have across the world through the state-run oil company’s outsized contribution to the climate crisis.’
  • InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap platform assesses climate policy engagement for over 500 companies and 250 industry associations globally. Among Climate Action 100+ companies, the largest corporate GHG emitters, Aramco ranks in the bottom 10%, with only 13 companies lobbying more negatively with climate policy.
  • Further examples of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to hinder multilateral reductions of fossil fuels include trying to obstruct a global phaseout pledge at COP28 and modifying the official COP29 negotiating text.