In an open letter delivered to the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) in Chourchevel following the men’s downhill finals on Feb 12, 2023, Protect Our Winters (POW) has called for greater climate action and transparency from the FIS.
In the letter that has been signed by over 170 athletes (with megastar Mikaela Shiffrin being among them), POW states that FIS’s action on climate are “too slow and too limited to match the scale of the issue, and that the actions it has taken are both overly reliant on offsets and lack the required transparency to be a leader on climate action.”
The signing athletes ask the FIS (who has just taken over the Freeride World Tour) to adjust its calendar in order to reduce international travel and to delay the start of competitions. Due to the lack of snow, many races scheduled for November and December 2022 were cancelled. And even if carbon emissions compensation is already common practice within the FIS, POW wants the organization to shift priorities to reduce emissions rather than compensate. FIS had promised to be the first international federation to become carbon positive thanks to a reforestation project in the Amazon.
In addition to the organization’s call for more action, questions have been raised around Johan Eliasch’s joint role as both FIS president and co-chair of Cool Earth (an organization FIS has partnered with) as to the transparency and ease of public access to information of how its offsets are calculated.
The call-to-action from the open letter, written by rising Austrian skiing star, FIS athlete and POW ambassador Julian Schütter, reads:
- FIS representatives must commit to reaching net-zero for all of FIS operations and events by 2035 or prior
- FIS has to create a sustainability strategy of how to achieve the 50 percent emissions reduction by 2030, as committed to through the UN Sports for Climate Action framework and present it to the public before the start of 2024 season
- FIS has to install a sustainability department that ensures that sustainability becomes a key aspect of all governance processes and operations, which must be controlled and certified by an independent organization
- Full transparency is needed to back up FIS‘ role as a much needed pioneer.
The full letter along with a list of signatories is available here.
