For about a decade, Qatar has been a giant construction site. And, in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the gar-rich nation built seven stadiums in addition to dozens of hotels and new roads. Amidst the construction and rise in transportation, the game is shaping up to be the most carbon-insensitive tournament.
2022 FIFA World Cup and its rising Carbon usage
As the 2022 FIFA World Cup is shaping up to be the most carbon-insensitive tournament in history, organizers are pledging to reprise the negative environmental impacts caused by it. They are hoping to make it ‘carbon neutral’ by paying to remove or reduce carbon from some other regions on Earth. However, their plan is deeply flawed. FIFA and Qatar are not just mitigating the event’s environmental impact but also increasing it.
The organizers stated they want to buy about 1.8 million offsets from the Doha-based Global Carbon Council. This is also setting off a sign for projects that fail to meet standards across the world. The GCC certification states that it “will make no difference whatsoever to global emissions”. “What GCC is offering here is at best ignorant, and at worst an obvious attempt to create more supply of low quality, low-cost credits with an illusion of credibility,” stated Gilles Dufrasne. Dufrasne is a policy lead at Carbon Market Watch, a non-profit. He is also an expert advisor for the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market.
More on the issue
As per Dufrasne, this projects that the GCC approval can be tied to renewable energy development in middle-income nations such as Turkey, Siberia, and India. Previously, solar, hydroelectric or wind plants could generate carbon credits and the additional revenue could motivate developers. However, this is not the case in several lotions as the cost of renewable energy fell by almost 90 percent. “Issuing carbon credits to large renewable energy projects in 2022 goes against fundamental integrity rules of carbon markets,” added Dufrasne.
“We concluded that only those in least-developed countries were still additional,” said David Antonioli. Antonioli is the chiseled Verra. According to Verra, the vérification body introduced the ban for making “sure carbon finance was driven to where it is needed most”. As per the Science Based Targets initiative, companies must only buy offsets from projects actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. However, the GCC disagrees with it. “Renewable energy is the single biggest climate mitigation activity to reach a net-zero world. We disagree in principle with the decision taken by Verra and Gold Standard to make a blanket decision on all the projects from the developed world,” stated Kishor Rajhansa. Rajhansa is the COO of GCC.