World Cup gets the green light

PUNTA DEL ESTE - When thousands gather at the new stadium in South Africa’s Cape Town next month for the football World Cup, authorities will make sure they know the lights are being powered by wind energy.

“We’re using this major sporting event to focus on the environment,” UN Environment Programme chief Achim Steiner said here Monday after the start of the assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) — a meet that takes place once every four years and where it is decided how countries will spend the millions of dollars now available for green projects.

“It’s not that climate change and biodiversity are out there somewhere and over here we play football,” Steiner said at a press conference. “Global warming and loss of biodiversity affect us all. That’s why we are bringing these issues to the stadiums.”

How exactly are they doing that? “We’re retrofitting street lights, traffic lights and billboards to make them more efficient and also using solar panels to light up parts of the venues,” Robert Dixon of the GEF secretariat said.

Zaheer Faqir of South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs said: “It’s about raising awareness and thus changing peoples’ behaviour.”

Wearing his country’s football jersey, Faqir said: “Pele told us he who controls the ball controls the score. You’ll control the earth’s score only if you control this big ball.”

But how does that square with South Africa getting a huge World Bank loan to build the world’s fourth largest coal-fired power plant, since coal is the most polluting way to produce power? “We had to go for this short-term solution due to the power shortage,” Faqir said. Steiner hoped this would “be the last time South Africa is forced to take such a decision”.