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THE MAKING OF THE IOC ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AS THE THIRD DIMENSION OF THE OLYMPIC MOVEMENT

Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Michael Letters

University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

The Winter Olympics at Nagano, Japan, in 1998 marked the first Games at which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had a clearly articulated environmental protection policy that was to be followed by the organizing committee. This article attempts to explain the conditions under which this policy came to be, arguing that it was the widespread environmental damage at the 1992 Albertville and the Savoie Region Games, and the subsequent environmentally conscious Green Games of Lillehammer, Norway (1994), that were the historical benchmarks for the development of this policy. The importance of human/environment interaction in the creation of global sport policy is developed and demonstrates the primacy of local initiatives (Albertville, Lillehammer) upon transnational global concerns (IOC environmental policy), an example of the so-called disjuncture debate. The IOC declaration that environmental protection has become the third dimension of the Olympic movement, alongside sport and culture, is problematic; the IOC policy statements suggest that the IOC led in the development of environmental protection. The authors argue that, after Albertville, the IOC was pressured into developing an environmental policy but had little understanding of how to address this global issue. The Norwegian people, with their long-standing and well-developed respect for nature, provided an example that the IOC embraced. The local initiative of Lillehammer has become the global policy that all future Olympic Games organizing committees must follow if they are to win the bid to organize an Olympiad.

Key Words: Albertville • environment • globalization • International Olympic Committee • Lillehammer • policy

International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 35, No. 3, 294-308 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/101269000035003004


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