Gianni Infantino had promised this would be the greenest World Cup ever. “(We) aim to make the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022 carbon neutral”, he said in a video posted on Fifa’s YouTube channel on 5 June 2022, to coincide with World Environment Day.

As a signatory of the UN Convention on Climate Change’s Sports for Climate Action Framework, whose stated ambition is to achieve Net Zero by 2040, world football’s governing body would actually be ahead of that timetable if it managed to organise the first-ever carbon neutral global sports event.

According to Fifa’s assessment, Qatar had “pledged to mitigate and offset all of the tournament’s greenhouse gas emissions, while advancing low-carbon solutions in Qatar and the region”.

How this could be achieved was far from obvious. Preliminary analysis done by carbon finance consultancy SouthPole (*) at the behest of the organisers and Fifa estimated that the Qatar World Cup would generate a total of 3.6 megatons of CO2, 1.5 megatons more than Russia 2018, the equivalent of the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by Iceland over a whole year. This took into account the emissions generated by the construction of the infrastructure needed to host the tournament, which included the building from scratch of seven stadiums and the renovation of an eighth.

Not everyone was convinced by SouthPole’s arithmetics. For independent environmental assessors such as Carbon Market Watch, this represented a wild under-estimate of the actual impact of the tournament, which their researchers said could reach ten times that.

One reason for that was that Fifa’s and Qatar’s calculations predicted a 60-year lifespan for the stadiums, when the World Cup would only last for 30 days, 19 more could be added for the hosting of the 2019 and 2021 Fifa Club World Cups. Seven of these eight stadiums would also be used when Qatar hosted the 2024 AFC Asian Cup. That’s another 30 days, 79 days in total. Then what?

The world was assured that plans were in place to make sure that the colossal “zero-waste” venues built to welcome players, officials and fans in November and December 2022 would not be left to rot in the sun, as so many reminders of 21st century sport succumbing to folie des grandeurs, a ruinous white elephants graveyard.

Some sections of some of the stadiums were to be removed, recycled or donated to less privileged countries. Two of the new arenas, Al Janoub and Ahmad bin Ali, would be resized in order to accommodate Al Wakrah and al Rayyan, clubs which play in the Qatar Stars League, the country’s top division.

Another would be put at the disposal of the Qatari women’s national team. The spectacular Stadium 974, built using disused containers, would be dismantled and offered – gratis – to another nation.

That was then. So how is it now?

Empty or Deserted stadiums

The Education City Stadium, which hosted eight World Cup matches, had been earmarked to become the home of Qatar women’s national football team, once its upper tier had been removed and its capacity had been reduced from 40,000 to 20,000 spectators.

The stadium has been used since the World Cup, most notably for community events involving female athletes and for hosting Qatar’s National Sports Day as well as four games of the 2023 Asian Cup and the final of the 2024 Amir Cup.

But as of September 2024, there still is no such thing as a Qatar women’s national football team. While there are girls and women who play football in the emirate (at the academy of Qatari-owned French club Paris Saint-Germain FC, for example), its national women’s team took part in its last official game on 19 April 2014, when it was defeated 2-8 by Bahrain at an international tournament held in Jordan.

The “unofficial friendly” which took place between “Qatar” and “Afghanistan” in an empty Khalifa International Stadium in November 2021 did not feature AFC or Fifa-recognised teams. This 10 year period of inactivity means that the Qatar women’s national team is no longer ranked by Fifa. In other words, it no longer exists.

The Qatar Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy did not reply specifically to questions about the future of the Qatar Women’s National Football Team – if it has one.

“The Education City Stadium is being transformed into a hub for girls and women to play sports and for hosting events geared towards improving both the physical and mental health of women”, it said in a statement.

What of the clubs, then?

Though official attendance statistics for the Qatar Stars League are not available, footage of recent games played by the two clubs which moved into World Cup venues in August 2023, Al Wakrah and Al Rayyan, show swathes of empty seats and whole sections of the stadium which are deserted – a far cry from the record crowd of 28,397 which attended Al Rayyan’s 1-0 win over Al Arabi at the outset of the 2023-24 season.

It doesn’t look as if staging two Club World Cups, one Asian Cup and one World Cup on Qatari soil in the space of five years has triggered the mass enthusiasm for the game which the Supreme Committee must have hoped for.

The last available attendance figures date from the 2016-17 season, when the average crowd at a Qatar Stars League game was a disappointing 672 – only a fraction more than the number of spectators who watch England’s Northern Premier League, the seventh tier of the English football pyramid.

Yet those stadiums must be looked after. The pitches must be watered and kept trim. The lights must be switched on, even if nobody’s in the room, in a country where 99% of electricity is generated by fossil-fuelled power stations. A sixty-year lifespan, maybe, but what a miserable life it’ll be.

Stadium 974

Stadium 974 was meant to be the most spectacular testament to Fifa and Qatar’s ambition of a sustainable World Cup. 974 – Qatar’s international dialling code is +974 – disused and recycled shipping containers provided the raw elements which Fenwick Iribarren Architects used to create what was to be the first-ever temporary World Cup venue.

The original plan was to dismantle the arena as soon as the tournament was over, and donate it to a country which could then re-erect it to suit its own purposes.

Uruguay was often mentioned as a likely destination. The South American country had organised, and won, the very first World Cup in 1930. It was now bidding to stage the centenary edition of the tournament, sharing this responsibility with neighbouring Paraguay, Argentina and Chile. Many felt, not just in South America, that this was the right thing to do.

This would be like a passing of the Olympic torch from one member of the global “football family” to another. This beautiful notion had to be abandoned when realpolitik dictated that Uruguay’s dream should be set aside.

Saudi Arabia had waded in, barged in in fact, with all of its considerable financial and diplomatic clout and had every intention of securing the hosting rights for a future World Cup, either in 2030 or 2034.

The Saudis’ remarkably close relationship with Gianni Infantino’s administration did the rest. All the negotiating, haggling and bartering was held behind closed doors, with no transparency, no scrutiny, and no consultation. 

The Fifa Congress, that is the 211 Member Associations which make up Fifa, was not offered a chance to discuss Infantino’s decision to give the 2030 World Cup to Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina (though not Chile) were pacified with the equivalent of a consolation goal when they were awarded a single group game each at the 2030 tournament.

Now that the way was clear – given Fifa’s rule that no confederation may host two consecutive World Cups, even if it is for three games only – Saudi Arabia will just have to wait for the formality of the next Fifa Congress, in December, to be anointed host of the 2034 World Cup.

Stadium 974 wouldn’t be shipped to Montevideo, then. It wouldn’t be shipped anywhere. It would remain in situ, a short walk away from Doha’s Ras Abu Aboud beach, forsaken, unused, unloved, like the incongruous dropping of a passing pachyderm.

Recent satellite photographs of the site show no sign of any dismantlement. 

What’s to be done with this broken dream is not clear. The construction of Stadium 974 generated more CO2 emissions than any other 2022 World Cup project, given the technical difficulties which had to be overcome.

The Deutschlandfunk journalist Maximilian Rieger managed to set foot on the site in December 2023, and saw scanners wrapped in plastic films still standing where they’d been used by Qatari security to screen visiting fans a year previously.

Stadium 974 was supposed to be used for training purposes by teams taking part in the 2024 Asian Cup, but whether this happened or not is unknown. When the question was put to the Qatar Supreme Committee, they responded: “Plans for the post-tournament use of Stadium 974 are still being assessed and will be announced in due course.”

A Qatari events organiser had planned to host a Malayalam-themed extravaganza there in March this year, gathering some of the biggest film and music stars from the Indian state of Kerala. The event had already been cancelled once in November 2023, because of the Qatari authorities’ security concerns.

This time, at the very last minute, “visa issues”, technical problems and unspecified “weather conditions” prevented the festival from taking place – when 200 performers had already arrived in Doha and were filmed ambling in the empty stadium.

The only other people to have set foot there are the security guards who continue to keep watch on the venue which has been abandoned since the World Cup ended in December 2022. 

Worthless Credits

One of the easiest means for organisations to claim carbon-neutrality is to purchase so-called “carbon credits”.

The rationale couldn’t be simpler. Say a project will cause emissions of X tonnes of CO2. All that needs to be done is to invest in carbon-offsetting ventures which are intended to trap the same amount of greenhouse gases or produce benefits which can be quantitatively evaluated and match the negative impact of the emissions.

This used to be the go-to solution for companies anxious to burnish their green credentials, and makes a good impression on the general public. 

However, environmental agencies are now highly sceptical, not to say dismissive about the true worth of carbon credits, and the United Nations has attacked companies which rely on them to hit their climate targets.

This did not deter Fifa and Qatar from putting those credits at the forefront of their offsetting strategy. A ‘Global Carbon Council’ (GCC) was created by the Qataris with the purpose of identifying and purchasing credits which would theoretically offset half of the 3.6 megatons of CO2 which Fifa estimated to be the carbon footprint of the 2022 World Cup.

Another “Greenhouse gas accounting report” compiled by the Qatari organisers and since taken offline, but which can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine, stated that “all remaining emissions [would] be offset through investing in internationally recognised and certified carbon credits […] on a voluntary basis, leading the way in the sports industry.”

The problem is that the retained projects were overwhelmingly linked to the production of renewable energy, which established, “internationally recognised” carbon market assessors refuse to register as worthwhile initiatives.

Why is that? Because the solar or wind farms in question, such as the new Al Kharshaah 800 megawatts solar farm, “switched on” on the opening day of the World Cup, would have been built anyway.

“Purchasing carbon credits from renewable energy projects is often a mistake because these projects typically lack additionality, meaning they are economically viable without the revenues from carbon credits”, Inigo Wyburd of Carbon Market Watch explained.

“Moreover, the prevalence of such low-quality credits saturates and undermines the integrity of the market, ultimately failing to contribute to genuine climate impact.”

Manchester University climate scientist Kevin Anderson is even more scathing. According to him, any carbon-neutrality claims of that kind are not just “deeply misleading” but also “incredibly dangerous”.

The Tree and Turf Farm

Some of the initiatives taken by Qatar to offset the World Cup’s environmental impact seemed to make more sense than their purchase of flawed carbon credits. The most spectacular of those projects was the creation of a large “tree and turf nursery” in the municipality of Umm Salal, which the Gulf Times described as “the heart of Qatar World Cup“.

“The tree and turf nursery features a total of 679,000 shrubs and 16,000 trees, most of which are replanted across the stadium sites and other areas of the country” a Supreme Committee spokesperson said at the time.

“Many of the plants are endemic to the region and drought tolerant, which minimises the irrigation requirements. The irrigation system uses recycled water. These new trees will reduce carbon emissions.”

How much of a genuine positive impact those new trees would have was difficult to quantify. The amount of CO2 they would capture had to be weighed against the emissions generated by the construction of the site and the energy needed to look after the vegetation, given the challenge of caring for trees and plants in the desert heat.

Moreover, one of the farm’s specific objectives was time-limited by nature. It was to provide the considerable amount of turf needed for the World Cup stadiums and training facilities during the tournament. Once the competition was over, that need greatly diminished and those facilities no longer seem to be used to the same degree.

So what to do with this space? The organisers of the World Cup had said that at least part of the nursery would be transformed into a recreational park for the local population. There is no sign of this happening as yet.

Little information can be gathered about the site, which was last mentioned in Qatari media nearly five years ago. Currently available satellite images of the Umm Salal Tree and Turf nursery show a predominantly brown area, while aerial photographs taken a year and a half ago still showed an almost continuous mass of greenery within the perimeter of the farm.

A spokesperson for the Qatar Supreme Committee sent this statement in response to our queries: “The operation of the Umm Slal Tree and Turf Nursery has been transferred to the Ministry of Municipality and Ministry of Sport. There are no plans to close or downsize the facility as it continues to provide pitches for Qatar’s sporting facilities.”

Court Defeat for Fifa

The weakness of Qatar’s and Fifa’s green claims led Carbon Market Watch, Climate Alliance Switzerland and other environmental organisations to file a joint complaint against Fifa in five countries, including its own patch, Switzerland, for multiple breaches  and violations of the country’s ‘Law against Unfair Competition’, the code of practice on Advertising and Commercial Communication of the International Chamber of Commerce Code Practices and the rules of the Swiss Commission for Fair Trading. 

The voluminous dossier compiled by the complainants intended to demonstrate that Fifa had mis-sold its star competition as “carbon neutral” by making assertions which could not be substantiated and were at best guesswork and, at worst, attempts to fool the general public into believing that the World Cup’s environmental impact would be zero. This constituted a clear case of false advertising in the plaintiffs’ view; in the view of anyone but Qatar and Fifa, in fact.

The case was heard by the Second Chamber of the Swiss Fairness Commission, who ruled in favour of the complainants on 5 June 2023.

The judgement’s conclusion read: “It is recommended that the defendant refrain in future from making the disputed allegations, in particular that the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar would be climate- and C02-neutral, unless it can provide, at the time of disclosure, full proof of the calculation, using generally accepted methods, of all C02 emissions caused by the tournament and proof of the full offsetting of these C02 emissions.”

And this, it seems that neither Qatar nor Fifa will ever be able to do.

(*) Fifa’s consultants, SouthPole, have also been accused of profiteering from the sale of carbon credits.

The Kariba REDD+ Project in Zimbabwe was SouthPole’s biggest project, covering 750,000 hectares, an area over half the size of Qatar.

SouthPole sold carbon credits based on the idea that this area was under threat of deforestation. Companies were told that in buying these carbon credits, they were protecting this forest and could therefore offset their carbon emissions.

In January 2023, Follow the Money found that SouthPole had hugely inflated the number of carbon offsets available from the project, resulting in an actual increase in carbon emissions.

In addition, it found that by buying up carbon credits for as little as €0.50 and selling them on for €20, SouthPole made an extra €18 million from Kariba project offsets, none of which went to the local community.

It is not known if SouthPole advised Qatar 2022 to purchase any Kariba carbon credits to offset World Cup emissions. There are no records of carbon credits bought in relation to the Qatar 2022 Fifa World Cup.

Fifa was contacted for the purpose of this article and asked when their long-awaited environmental assessment report on Qatar 2022 would be published. No answer had been forthcoming at the time of publication.

This article, another version of which was published by Josimar magazine in Norway, is a collaborative investigation led by Philippe Auclair, Andy Brown, Jack Kerr, Samindra Kunti and Steve Menary and was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.