This paper discusses motorsport from the viewpoint of environmental sustainability amid growing concerns about the impact of human activity on the environment. It reviews the literature that positions motorsport in a global environmental context and explores the often used but rarely defined concept of sustainability. The author suggests that while motorsport is a significant sporting activity for economic and social reasons, there are considerable doubts as to whether it is currently managed and marketed in an environmentally sustainable way.
The relationship between sport and the environment has been primarily examined to understand how sport impacts the natural environment. However, as the influence of climate change has become more apparent, there is a need to establish a systematic understanding of the impacts of climate change on the operations of sport. The aim of this review is to take stock of existing literature on climate change's impacts on organized competitive sport entities, with further attention paid to their adaptation efforts. A scoping review was conducted to identify relevant studies published between 1995 and 2021. After evaluating more than 2100 publications, we retained 57 articles and analyzed them to answer the research questions: (1) What evidence is available regarding the impacts of climate change on the operation of organized competitive sport entities? (2) What is known from the literature about the measures taken by organized competitive sport entities to adapt to the impacts of climate change? Our analysis yielded five major themes: (1) Heat impacts on athlete and spectator health; (2) heat impacts on athlete performance; (3) adaptive measures taken in sport; (4) suitability of various cities for event hosting; and(5) benchmarking and boundary conditions. This review reveals that there is evidence of some climate change impacts on sport, but the literature reflects only a small share of the global sport sector. Equally, much remains to be understood about the nature of adaptation. This article is categorized under: • Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change K E Y W O R D S athlete performance, climate adaptation, climate change, health impact, sport
Given the growing body of research pertaining to sport, the natural environment and sustainability, it is an appropriate time to review the orientation and findings of this work, and to identify further avenues for research. This is especially so given the vast amount of literature published across a range of disciplines that document the evidence of significant change to the natural environment on a global scale. Such environmental issues include the multi-dimensional problem of anthropogenic climate change which has led to a complex global web of policy, legislative, commercial and organisational responses, and that of itself has been the subject of a vast body of multi-disciplinary research. In the field of sport, relatively few studies have examined the impact of sport on the natural environment, or the environmental sustainability of current sport management practices. Further, an even smaller body of work has investigated the impact of environmental change on sport. This chapter concludes with a discussion of research questions that reflect gaps in the literature that may guide future research efforts.
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