World Athletics on Tuesday released its first annual review assessing meets against its “Athletics for a Better World” standard, designed to minimise environmental impact while enhancing social and local economic benefits.
The sustainability report categorised events from 2024 into five achievement levels – platinum, gold, silver, bronze and recognised – based on compliance with the ABW standard.
“The World Athletics Indoor Championships Glasgow 24 and the Oslo Bislett Games achieved platinum, and the Hypo-Meeting combined events meeting in Gotzis, Austria, and the Weltklasse Zurich achieved gold,” World Athletics said in a statement.
The review, which looked at reports from 102 events from 36 countries, found that 48 meets reached one of the achievement levels.
“It’s a start our entire sport can be proud of,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said in a statement.
“We knew from experience and discussions with organisers that sustainability planning and reporting does require an allocation of additional time, resources and expertise. And we know that poses organisational challenges across our events, which will need time to change.”
The ABW standard evaluated events in six areas, including leadership in sustainability, sustainable production and consumption, climate change and carbon, local environment and air quality, global equality as well as diversity, accessibility and wellbeing.
“When fully adopted, the ABW standard will apply to about 500 in-stadium athletics and mass participation road running events, making it the largest sustainability evaluation system in the sport industry,” World Athletics added.
