The games boost local business, create much-needed employment in host cities, but have also been criticised for adding to emissions and social displacement of the vulnerable
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar
In his recent Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi championed India’s capacity to host the 2036 Olympic Games. “It is the dream of India,” he said.
Hosting an event as large-scale and as prestigious as the Olympics is seen as a sign of arrival for developing economies, which is perhaps why Modi wants to make a bid for the honour. But a look at the history of the Olympics—including its latest green avatar on display at Paris this summer—suggests that that prestige can come at a hefty social, economic, and environmental cost to the host cities. Is the dream worth those costs, especially to local communities? And did Paris change that calculation in any way, as its organisers hoped it would?
Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons
To answer these questions, it’s worth looking first at what the Games can do for host cities. Historically, the games have been seen as a boost for local business and employment and a driver for accelerating infrastructure development in a region. And that does happen to a degree: The urban area gets a big injection of money to create arenas, roads, and housing, and this in turn generates jobs. The actual event brings thousands of people to stay in local hotels, eat at restaurants, and shop. One study found that hosting the summer Olympics can boost regional GDP per capita in the year before and during the event by 3-4 percentage points.
In addition, the new infrastructure can result in long-term benefits for the city in the form of sports facilities for local youth, permanent housing in the Olympic Village created for visiting athletes, and expanded transportation. Over half of the $42 billion budget for the 2008 games in Beijing went to road, rail, and airport facilities.
Beijing showed that such events can also aid other urban transitions. The games provided the impetus to make the changes needed to clean up the city’s infamous air pollution, found an assessment by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The introduction of stringent vehicle emission and fuel quality standards in the run up to the event helped slash particulate levels and phase out ozone-depleting hydrochlorofluorocarbons. The city also planted thousands of trees and created new parks. Even temporary measures like traffic controls provided officials with a real-world test of their efficacy.
Despite all these benefits, the legacy of the games has not been positive for most host cities.
For one, the event is so expensive that the honour of hosting is often referred to as “the winner’s curse”. Since 1960, the average cost of hosting has been triple the bid price since 1960, according to a recent University of Oxford study. Cost overruns ranged from 2% in Beijing in 2008 to 352% in the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, the study found. This cost variability is comparable to earthquakes, pandemics and other “deep disasters”, the authors said. The $3 billion spent for the 2004 Athens Olympics is even thought to have contributed to Greece’s debt crisis.
In terms of employment, construction jobs for the event are temporary and often go to already-employed workers, according to one study. In addition, the newly created infrastructure can become white elephants, with massive arenas sucking up money in maintenance or turning derelict.
As for local communities, the event has often resulted in social displacement of the vulnerable. The 2016 Rio games displaced a staggering 60,000 people from their homes. The 2012 games in London were intended to provide a model of social inclusion and leave a legacy of affordable housing in the area around the Olympic Park site. But reports say only 13,000 homes were finally built in the neighbourhood, and only 11% of these were affordable for people with average incomes.
In the past decade of rising climate concerns, the environmental impact of the Olympics has also come under criticism. The London games emitted 3.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
Collage by: Mansi Bhaktwani
The Paris games were to be the “game-changer,” providing a blueprint for the Olympics’ new sustainability agenda. The organisers aimed to cut the games’ carbon footprint by half to 1.5 million metric tons of CO2; draw on 100% renewable energy; and use mostly existing or temporary infrastructure. Organisers also insisted they would be more socially inclusive, in line with the strategy of “Olympism365” which aims to strengthen the role of sport in achieving the UN sustainable development goals. That made Paris a test-case not only for a lower-cost green Olympics but also for a ‘just transition’—that is, ensuring that the shift to a low-carbon economy does not leave workers and communities from the traditional energy economy behind.
So how did Paris do? News reports from Paris suggest a mixed bag of results—some genuine gains along with some alleged “greenwashing” and social exclusion.
On the plus side, the city built 400 km of new bike lanes, extended the metro network, planted lakhs of new trees, and experimented with a geothermal cooling system that pumps water from below. They constructed only two new sports facilities, including an aquatics centre with a solar energy farm on its roof and a large grass-covered ‘car-parking’ area that doubles up as a recreational space for the neighbourhood.
On the employment front, the Games aimed to train 30,000 people in new skills, employ some 180,000 people, and use mostly small-and-medium-sized French suppliers. (Future assessments will confirm whether these targets were met.)
On the downside, several hundred people including women and children were removed from homeless camps in different neighbourhoods, reportedly in order to spruce up the city ahead of the games. Many were migrants from African countries fleeing war and poverty. Some were sent to alternative accommodation outside the city, but that housing was temporary.
Meanwhile, only a third of new eco-friendly housing built for the Games was expected to be affordable after the event. “If Paris had applied to housing the same progressive approach it has used to upgrade and expand its existing sports venues,” writes architecture critic Oliver Wainwright, “It could have had a socially and environmentally sustainable legacy to be truly proud of.”
To be fair, the true legacy of the Paris games won’t be known for some time. But the challenges of the Olympics’ new green agenda are already appearing in Los Angeles, the host for the 2028 games.
Organisers have promised a “car-free” Olympics in a city that is a byword for unsustainability, with its traffic gridlock and smog. Los Angeles authorities have got funding for two new metro projects and an expansion in bus networks, and also plan to install electric vehicle charging stations and reuse existing venues as much as possible.
But locals aren’t happy—for reasons their compatriots in previous host cities would understand. Construction of new facilities is causing air and noise pollution in a minority-dominated neighbourhood and driving up local land prices. Authorities reportedly fast-tracked environmental reviews of a new arena and reduced local input on plans. Even the reduced carbon targets will be met partly by purchasing “carbon offsets”—a controversial tool by which purchasers get the carbon credits for mitigation measures somewhere else in the world. A coalition of local groups called “NOlympicsLA” wants the money to be spent on measures like providing housing for some 60,000 homeless people in the district.
The battle over the LA Olympics, and the recent experience of Paris, reflect a recurring theme in the climate agenda: a disjunct between lofty global goals and local needs and impacts.
In a country like India, that local impact will be felt not by hundreds but by thousands of people. The 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi was projected to create close to 25 lakh jobs, and helped drive expansions in transport in the capital region. Even if many of those jobs are temporary, the numbers are hard to dismiss in a country where thousands migrate to cities to seek work. But the games also reportedly left over 250,000 people homeless. Before chasing the 2036 Olympics, India should perhaps ask: Can the dream work for everyone?
Earth Shifts, a monthly column on The Migration Story, will analyse the impact of global green goals amid mounting climate uncertainties on lives and livelihoods
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar is an environment and science journalist based in Mumbai.
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