‘A great step forward’: ECB signs up to UN climate framework

The England and Wales Cricket Board confirmed on Monday that it is joining the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, becoming the first national cricketing governing body to sign up.

The ECB joins the county clubs Gloucestershire and Surrey, the MCC, Melbourne Cricket Club and the International League T20 team Desert Vipers – as well as more than 200 other sporting and broadcasting organisations from the World Flying Disk Federation to the Lawn Tennis Association. Signatories sign up to five principles, encouraging them to embed environmental thinking into their decision making, and includes key targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and of reaching net zero by 2040.

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“The UN Sports for Climate Framework is symbolic and shows the ECB’s intent to join other leaders in world sport,” said Dr Russell Seymour, chair of the British Association for Sustainable Sport. “It has to be someone senior, usually the chief executive, that signs the commitment and the data must be publicly reported before submission, so it gives leadership and transparency. So it’s a great step forward, but it is now what they do with it that will count.”

The new Environmental Sustainability Plan for Cricket recognises the threat that climate change poses to the game and commits the ECB to improve its own sustainability as well as working with the professional and recreational games to do the same, under the headings Tackling Climate Change, Managing resources and Protecting the Natural Environment. The link to nature and biodiversity will please many who have long seen cricket grounds as valuable green oases in overcrowded cities or over-managed countryside.

The document follows the ECB’s publication of extreme heat regulations after record breaking temperatures during the 2022 summer, and the increasing success of the County Grants Climate Change fund in the recreational game. Money is available to clubs for energy saving, water management, electric mowers or rollers, and drought and flood resistance.

In 2022, 37 clubs won grants for solar projects, which has risen to 64 in 2023. The ECB is particularly keen for clubs to engage with flood resilience in the hope of pre-empting what has become increasing – and costly – storm damage, with two in five clubs at risk. Storm Babet in October resulted in 23 clubs asking for emergency assistance.

All this is days before the start of Cop28, on the back of the recent, sobering, Game Changer 2 report, a men’s World Cup marred by air pollution, and the International Cricket Council’s sponsorship deal with Aramco, the Saudi-owned oil company.