“World Cup for whom?”
Looking back at the social and economic consequences of the 2014 tournament
By Luisa Abbot Galvao, climate and energy associate, with contributions from Amigos da Terra (Friends of the Earth Brazil)
Football (soccer) is celebrated as a unifying force for people from all walks of life around the world. But the commercialization of the sport makes the World Cup a deplorable spectacle of money-grabbing, further afflicting already disenfranchised communities. The issues surrounding the World Cup are highly relevant to the work of Friends of the Earth, as they involve fights against systems that preserve the interests and greed of a few, at the expense of a healthy and just world for the many.
The 2014 World Cup was the most expensive and lucrative event in its 84-year history. While Brazil spent more than $14 billion in public funds to build stadiums, city infrastructure and provide security for visitors, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association — the sport’s nonprofit organizing body, headquartered in Switzerland — amassed $4 billion in revenue. As a nonprofit organization, FIFA pays no tax on commercial income from the World Cup and keeps billions in “reserve” funds, while host countries subsidize its events with money from strained public coffers. Such a conflict led World Cup protestors to chant “World Cup for whom?” as their slogan.
FIFA’s imperialist rules also undermined existing national safeguards. As an example, FIFA refused to abide by Brazil’s law against selling beer in stadiums, a law implemented 11 years ago to protect fans after various incidents led to violence. FIFA argued that this would have affected the revenue of its for-profit sponsors, which were also exempt from paying taxes. The World Cup was a spectacle of both sport and contradiction. The month-long event was responsible for more than three billion Facebook posts and 672 million tweets. During the final game, nearly 1 billion people tuned in, worldwide. In total, the event captured the attention of nearly half of all humanity. The global appetite for football has been co-opted by those in power and woven into a false narrative of universality that masks gross inequalities among football fans worldwide.
Human rights and social justice
Over 60 percent of the Brazilian population is black or of mixed race. Those who were able to attend the games, however, were predominantly white, and with means to buy expensive tickets, in advance, over the internet.
“Salvador is the most Afrocentric city in Brazil. At the Germany v Portugal game, however, if I didn’t know any better I would think I was in Kansas,” recounted Felipe Araujo, correspondent for German broadcaster ZDF.
In a country where the minimum wage is equivalent to $350 USD/month, and where economic wealth and political power is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of white Brazilians, individual tickets prices of between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars made the games largely inaccessible to people of color. The games, much like other public resources, were unavailable to those in economic classes representing 85 percent of the population. While this significant segment of the population was the most affected by the high costs and negative consequences of the World Cup, it was invisible to the cameras of mainstream news media covering the games.
Over 250,000 people, many who live in favelas (urban slums) were forcibly removed from their homes to accommodate new building and development for the World Cup. This was done largely without notice, legal protection, compensation or adequate relocation. Skyrocketing real estate prices have further segregated cities, compounding existing human rights abuses.
Preparations for the World Cup, and the 2016 Summer Olympics, added insult to the indignity of the realities of millions of Brazilians. Not uniquely, Brazil is a country characterized by acute inequality. São Paulo boasts more private helicopters than any city in the world. Meanwhile, the poor must make often hours-long commutes on a crowded, unreliable, dangerous and inadequate public transportation system. While the rich have access to some of the best private hospitals in the world, the poor die on public hospital floors awaiting medical attention. Education is similarly segregated along lines of class, and professors are often on strike over their dismal pay and working conditions. Indigenous groups continue to fight for the demarcation of their lands, while expanding agribusiness and large infrastructure projects — such as the proposed Belo Monte dam — threaten their very existence.
In 2013, “the giant woke up,” when over 2 million protestors took to the streets in cities across the country, and in satellite events around the world, demanding investment in public programs. Protestors called for “FIFA standard” hospitals, schools and transit systems. Anti-World Cup protests and strikes continued during the World Cup, but were largely quelled by police brutality and unwarranted arrests. The mainstream media was complicit by downplaying these actions and painting the World Cup as a joyous affair.
False green: An affront to the environment and human
Twelve stadiums across the 3 million-square-mile country were built or upgraded, at the cost of hundreds of millions, each. Nine construction workers died due to lax safety regulations and a rushed schedule. The maintenance costs for these “white elephants” will continue to suck money from public funds long after the games are concluded. Meanwhile, organizers threw some solar panels on stadiums, promoted flawed carbon offset programs and hailed the 2014 World Cup as a green success.
According to Fernando Campos Costa, chair of Amigos da Terra Brasil, “The 2014 World Cup was presented as a sustainable event with the creation of false mechanisms of a green economy, such as, for example, the ‘green goal,’ ‘the parks of the Cup,’ the ‘organic Cup,’ and the ‘zero carbon’ initiatives; with the intent of camouflaging and rendering invisible the violations of rights. FIFA equated the green economy with the mercantilization of nature.”
In June of 2012, just a few days before the international Rio +20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the government of Acre, in the Amazon, publicly celebrated the formal registration of the “Purus Project.” The project would provide payments for carbon naturally captured by the forests. An American company sold its carbon credits to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Not destroying this forest land was intended to “neutralize” the environmental impacts caused by the World Cup. In December of 2013, reports of serious rights violations of residents living in the area of carbon offset programs in the Amazon were published after Amigos da Terra Brasil and other organizations accompanied the Special Rapporteur on Human, Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights to Acre on a visit.
It became evident that the traditional practices of small-scale farmers were being assaulted by the imposition of restrictions that justified the sale of carbon credits and with threats to their rights to land. FIFA and the culture of mega-events are vehicles for popularizing and justifying the logic of compensation for pollution and environmental degradation, for creating new financial asset markets, and for the financialization of nature. These schemes hide socio-environmental conflicts associated with such events, promote false environmental solutions and create new business for the financial sector.
Our responsibility
Despite some acknowledgement of the problems that plague host countries and the scandal that is FIFA, the World Cup continues to be treated as sacrosanct. But people should not have to die or be displaced for our quadrennial dose of delightful games; nor should our environment be wrecked in the process. In order for the World Cup to be an event truly for everyone, we must work to dismantle the unjust systems that keep it benefitting only the privileged. We can pressure systems in many ways, by informing our communities, pressuring our governments and making small, everyday choices like boycotting FIFA. In the same way that we must all eat less meat and reject products with palm oil, we must exercise restraint as a society if we are to ensure a sustainable and harmonious existence.
This article was originally published in the Friends of the Earth summer 2014 newsmagazine.
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