The World Ski Association FIS calls itself “climate positive” – with the help of an opaque rainforest initiative. Greenpeace calls for an end to the “brazen greenwashing”.
“Real climate protection instead of selling indulgences” – that’s what it says headline of an open letter, with which Greenpeace International addressed the FIS President Johan Eliasch on Monday (April 24th, 2023). “Instead of making winter sports fit for the future, the FIS under President Eliasch is fueling its downfall. CO2 compensation payments are nothing but brazen greenwashing”, says Adam Pawloff, program director at Greenpeace in Austria.
The environmental protection organization asked Eliasch to “to stop this sale of indulgences before the next season and to take real climate protection measures.”
The FIS has been calling itself “climate positive” for two years. According to its own statements, it overcompensates for the direct and indirect CO2 emissions of the FIS events with the help of its own initiative to protect the rainforest.
Greenpeace criticizes FIS racing calendar
Greenpeace also criticizes that last season’s World Cup events caused additional long flights. “Eliasch and FIS need to adjust the race calendar and ensure races are timed to minimize travel and related emissions,” said Pavloff.
Around 500 athletes are calling for more climate protection
The environmental protection organization is standing by the side of the approximately 500 athletes who signed the open letter from the Austrian alpine professional Julian Schütter. Schütter presented this in mid-February at the Alpine World Ski Championships in France.
The supporters include the alpine world stars Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and otherwise mostly professionals from the second and third row. 52 athletes from Germany have signed.
FIS rejects criticism
Together they call on the world association to take stronger measures for climate protection. “We know the current sustainability efforts of the FIS and rate them as insufficient”, says the letter addressed to Eliasch and the Council members. Skiing is due to climate change “existentially and acutely threatened”.
In a public reaction, the FIS wrote that it welcomed the commitment of the athletes and shared the concerns about the increasingly difficult weather forecasts. However, she rejected the criticism of her own climate protection efforts and referred, among other things, again to the FIS Rainforest Initiative.
Questionable collaboration with Cool Earth
However, many questions remain unanswered. For example, the FIS takes advice from Cool Earth on protecting the rainforest, although the British non-governmental organization itself writes that its approach is incompatible with the complex requirements of CO2 certification. The cooperation is also questionable because FIS President Eliasch himself is the chairman and co-founder of Cool Earth.
Transparency would be all the more important: How much does FIS pay Cool Earth? How does the compensation invoice work? What external controls are there for the FIS Rainforest Initiative?
FIS does not respond to requests
However, the FIS is keeping a low profile, leaving several inquiries from the sports show unanswered and not even naming contact persons. Schütter also says he wanted to obtain information but received no response from the FIS.
“It has to be transparent, otherwise you’ll just shoot yourself in the foot,” said Schütter to the sports show. “If you act like that, you only make yourself less credible and less popular with people who are concerned about the climate.”