Green Games?
There must have been some nervous faces in Canary Wharf as the PR disaster of the Delhi Commonwealth Games began to unfold a couple of weeks ago. With LOCOG, the 2012 organising committee, based a stones throw from our offices in Canary Wharf, the spectre of the London games becoming a similar mire of unfinished buildings, collapsed bridges and contaminated water will have caused a few sleepless nights.
The added worry is that like London 2012, the Delhi event was branded as the first “green” commonwealth games. Organisers had been working with the UN environment programme and construction was designed to be sympathetic to the local surroundings. Organisers had also planned to set up “green calculators” at the Games Village and other venues, where visitors could buy carbon credits to neutralise the harmful environmental effect of their activities. Leaving aside the controversy around carbon offsetting, a week into the games the calculators have still not appeared. Organisers are now saying they expect the calculators to be in place “in a day or two,” and attribute the blame to a delay by the Indian ministry of the environment.
It’s a stark reminder to the organisers of the London games that all too often, if things go wrong, it’s the green initiatives which are seen as easy to sacrifice. We’ve already seen plans for a wind turbine in the Olympic Park scrapped due to a “challenging” delivery timetable.
At one point it looked like the Delhi games might be called off altogether, another example of how modern media and communication platforms can turn a drama into a crisis overnight. I know LOCOG are serious about their commitment to making 2012 the greenest games. I just hope they have the strength of will to make it happen, whatever obstacles they face.
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