The Olympic Winter Games' tenuous relationship with the environment
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00:00 100 years ago, the first ever Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix, France.
00:05 Originally, there were only a few sports - bobsled, curling, hockey, skating and Nordic skiing.
00:12 The Games brought attention and money to winter retreats.
00:16 There were a number of, at the time, almost unknown winter sport destinations, little
00:24 mountain resorts, who became Olympic regions and put themselves on the world map in this
00:32 way enhancing tourism, in this way benefiting from the input of the Games and the economic
00:41 impact.
00:42 But in the past few decades, the Olympics have become huge undertakings and have often
00:47 been destructive to the environments of host countries.
00:50 At the Sochi Olympics in 2014, construction led to illegal waste dumping into water conservation
00:56 areas and the destruction of animal migration trails.
01:00 At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, 100 percent of the snow had to be artificially created
01:06 using vast amounts of water and energy.
01:10 In the future, the International Olympic Committee has vowed to be more sustainable, making it
01:14 policy to respect biodiversity and reduce our carbon emissions.
01:19 French Alps 2030, Salt Lake City 2034, Switzerland 2038, they all use existing capabilities.
01:30 They are all having at the very core sustainability.
01:34 They are all very flexible projects.
01:37 In the near future, however, the IOC estimates that climate change will mean that only 10
01:43 to 12 countries will be able to host winter events.