FFF at the University of Oxford: who is responsible for English football’s sustainable transition?
Football For Future was invited to chair a panel discussion at the University of Oxford on sustainability in English football, bringing together a variety of voices from across the sport to think about leading on sustainability in the sector.
The discussion was part of the Oxford Programme in Sustainability Leadership, a three-day course for current students from across the university, hosted by the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the School of Geography and the Environment.
The ECI is a multi-disciplinary research centre within the university which is home to some of the star strikers of climate science, including researchers who were lead authors on IPCC reports, which are the assessments on climate change by the scientific dream team assembled by the United Nations. The University of Oxford more generally is a world-leading centre of learning, teaching and research and the oldest university in the English-speaking world - talk about hallowed turf.
We brought together Wycombe Wanderers midfielder and FFF Champion David Wheeler, Louise Downey, Senior Sustainability Advisor at West Sussex County Council, and Emma Eaton, Football Development Officer - Female Lead at Surrey FA to talk through where leadership in sustainability should come from, and how we drive positive change in the sport.
Our panellists highlighted the lack of money allocated to tackling environmental sustainability within football, as well as the little information available on how football affects our climate.
David Wheeler talked about how individuals within the game can make a difference. “We can only control what we can control” he said. “That’s a big thing, each individual doing what they can do and try to influence their friends and local community the best that they can and hope that will have a ripple effect outwards from that".
Emma Eaton pointed towards the lack of funds and the constraints this places on driving sustainable change. “If we had [the] budget to go out into communities, into grassroots clubs and help them to educate their coaches or players on the small things, it would make a huge difference”, she observed.
Louise Downey remarked upon the transformative potential of the game. “The great thing about football is that it touches every demographic within society”, she argued; “there is no particular group of people it talks to. So it has the reach that even other sports don’t have.”
We second that - our sport has the potential to inspire people like nothing else on the planet.