Sustainability Beyond the Games
Andres Vergara on IOC’s Legacy Approach
by Bemente Abegaz
The modern Olympic Games are overseen by the non-governmental sports organization known as the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It was founded in 1894 in France and currently its headquarters are in Switzerland. The IOC selects the host city for both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and strives to use sport to progress and preserve the Olympic ideals of friendship, excellence, and respect on a global scale. It aims to advance international collaboration, equal opportunity, and sportsmanship.
We interviewed sport changemaker Andres Vergara, Senior Olympic Games Impact & Legacy Manager at IOC. Andres has over 10 years of experience planning and executing large-scale international athletic events, helping create a stakeholder-based strategy that is both resolute to shifting conditions and consistent with the Olympic ideals. Our conversation reflects on and shares more about his ambition to build a lasting and positive legacy in the fields of sports, society, and the environment.
Q: How do you describe to a general audience what the Legacy team at the IOC does?
Andres: The management of the Olympic games’ lasting benefits for their host cities — past and present — could be considered the responsibility of the IOC’s Legacy division. Our priorities include the collaboration with Olympic legacy stakeholders to improve society, the environment, and infrastructure, as well as other areas. Sport should encompass much more than merely engaging in physical exercise. We recognize these benefits, attempt to convey them, and strive to go beyond sport. We are modernizing the framework to emphasize the three sustainability pillars (societal, economic, and environmental). My responsibilities include monitoring the progress of legacy programs for Olympic Summer Games and the Winter Youth Olympic Games.
One example of our work is around the IOC’s ambition to influence the socioeconomic dimension of Paris 2024. After creating a socioeconomic charter, the organizing committee decided to concentrate on getting small and medium-sized enterprises involved in the games’ organization. This is because big contracts associated with the Olympics typically go to big corporations. To solve this, they have formed partnerships with local groups that combine Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), and they have developed a code that mandates that a specific portion of all contracts go to SMBs to provide the services that are necessary to deliver the event. In this manner, the Olympic Games’ economy benefits the local communities.
Q: What change in values or attitude is required for everyone involved in the sports ecosystem to be able to contribute to the common good, and what barriers stand in the way of this change in thinking?
Andres: The IOC’s job is to influence and assist in the preparation of these changes, but as an organization, we are not responsible for their delivery; all we can do is help to organize the dialogue so that the appropriate parties are involved in these initiatives to make sure they succeed.
When working with and providing learnings to committees, we place a high priority on making sure that the goals set forth are inclusive and not limited to one stakeholder or category. For example, if cutting waste is your goal, then everyone in the company needs to be working toward this objective. This involves including provisions in your contracts, from guaranteeing the ecological sustainability of the uniforms you use to the infrastructure that is being constructed. It can only succeed if it crosses multiple domains.
Organizations must include these goals in their daily operations, whether they are temporary like organizing committees, or long-term like ours.
A barrier we face is the misconception that Legacy will happen on its own, without any kind of planning. For example, wrongly assuming that after the closing ceremony of the Games, you will have 10,000 children participating in sports every day, with improved health indices, just because you have hosted the games and constructed a cutting-edge stadium. The absence of preparation to make this happen is the first obstacle. The second obstacle is that these programs mostly rely on public funding due to a lack of investment. Though it has been rising recently, private sector support is still very small. The majority of people view funding these kinds of projects as generosity. However, society is beginning to make different decisions linked to sustainability when they buy products, which may cause organizations to act differently. The third component is that Legacy must endure over time. With COVID, for instance, we saw how quickly things can change. Unfortunately, some Legacy structures haven’t been able to withstand this test.
Q: What are the critical partnerships and partners needed to achieve a mindset shift in the field? What do you see as some of the ecosystem barriers to the development of such partnerships?
Andres: Although it may sound a little redundant, the customer is the one who makes the decisions. For example, customers moving away from disposable products and toward more sustainable or circular alternatives has caused product evolution for future generations. Each person possesses the ability to bring about these changes. This is also evident in the area of inclusiveness, as in the case of transgender athletes. It was never a topic of conversation previously, but now because it is important to fans and customers, it is being assessed and discussed on a worldwide scale.
However, seeing people as a singular thing makes it impossible to generalize about their preferences, and it might be challenging to recognize this shared voice. It is then the institutions’ turn to respond to that. We acknowledge that times have changed and aim to increase participation. Our labor is meaningless if nobody shows up to watch the games with us. That explains why they are so crucial.
In order to bring about change, stakeholders must agree.
Politics is another area where this is evident: when everyone is in favor of a change, it will proceed through all barriers.
Regarding trends, the environment is of great concern since we need to act now to prevent winter sport from becoming improbable in the future. Inclusion, diversity, and gender equality are additional factors that fall under this category. The assurance of human rights respect is the third trend, and the pursuit of long-term benefits and events with a greater added worth than fleeting ones is the final one.
This article is part of our “Sport for Changemaking” series — a collection of articles that examine how Ashoka Fellows around the world are utilizing sports to create impact and mobilize change. The series showcases the potential of sports as a tool for social transformation and provide insights into strategies, impact, challenges, and lessons learned. Sign up for our newsletter and stay up to date with Ashoka’s Sport for Changemaking initiative.
