September Market Insight: Playing for Nature
As a long-suffering Scottish football fan, and a lifelong Greenock Morton supporter to boot, I've learned to manage my expectations.
So after a 28-year absence from the men's World Cup, I was simply delighted to see the boys in blue back on football's biggest stage this summer. One win over Haiti and defeats to Morocco and Brazil later, we finished 36th. Still, it was nice while it lasted.
Another tournament statistic caught my eye. Researchers at the University of Cambridge estimated the carbon footprint of the 2026 World Cup at around 4.23 million tonnes, 82% from fan travel and around three million tonnes from flying alone.
Sport's growing global environmental footprint is the elephant in the room, and it's leaving rather large prints. The relationship, however, works both ways. Sport depends on a clean and healthy environment: from the air athletes breathe to the pitches, rivers, coastlines and mountains where it is played. Heat, drought, flooding, wildfire and pollution increasingly threaten all of it. This summer, with one Tour de France stage cut short by a heat alert and fans told to stay away from another because of wildfires, race leader Tadej Pogačar said that, if he could, he would stop racing in hot places in July and August altogether.
Sport therefore has both a responsibility to act and a considerable stake in doing so.
That's the thinking behind Sports for Nature, on whose Advisory Board I sit. It brings together over 150 sports organisations committed to protecting and restoring nature, addressing nature-related risks in their supply chains, and using sport's extraordinary reach to inspire others. Last year I also helped develop its Urban Playbook, which helps clubs, venues and events restore nature on their own doorstep. Sport's influence, however, reaches far beyond the stadium, and so can its support for nature. That's where carbon finance comes in.
Cutting emissions must always take precedence. Travel, logistics and complex supply chains, however, mean some emissions are hard to eliminate. For genuinely residual emissions, high-integrity carbon credits offer a way of taking responsibility while directing finance towards climate action and, through nature-based projects, the protection and restoration of ecosystems.
So how can sport do this well?
Put integrity first. Credits need rigorous evidence of additionality, quantification and permanence, backed by strong environmental and social safeguards. They should complement ambitious decarbonisation, never excuse its absence.
Invest in resilience. Nature-based solutions can do far more than deliver carbon benefits. Restoring upstream forests and wetlands can reduce flood risk; urban trees can ease heat stress; mangroves can buffer coasts against storm surges. Well-targeted investment can protect the pitches, courses and coastlines on which sport depends.
Make it personal. Look at the club crest: is there an animal or plant whose habitat could be protected? Look at where players come from, where supporters live and where supply chains reach. Local projects can even let fans, athletes and staff get their hands dirty.
Diversify. Portfolios spanning different ecosystems, geographies and project types reduce risk and support a broader range of climate, nature and community outcomes. No manager fields eleven goalkeepers.
Sport's environmental opportunity is ultimately far larger than its footprint. Clubs, federations and events can improve their own estates, influence suppliers, mobilise millions of supporters and channel significant finance towards nature's recovery.
At Nature Broking, we see a real opportunity to help them do so, building diversified, high-integrity portfolios that reflect their climate commitments, their identity and communities, and the landscapes and seascapes that matter to them. After all, nature could do with a few more supporters on its side.