Many major sporting events are partially shielded from acute climate change impacts by taking place indoors. Others may be able to reschedule around extreme weather events. But for one branch of sport, climate change could make your entire venue literally evaporate.

The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) encompasses six Olympic disciplines, along with other sports outside the Olympic programme, such as Telemark skiing, grass skiing and, most recently, freeride. The only ski-related sport covered by other federations are biathlon and ski mountaineering. As a result, FIS oversees more sports disciplines than any federation in the world of sports.

Soon after scientists sounded the alarm about climate change in the late 1980s, FIS, aware of the threat to the future of its sport, began to take action. In 1994, the organisation met on the island of Mainau in Germany, on the Swiss border, and agreed on the FIS Mainau Manifesto, which declared its commitment to safeguarding the future of skiing by supporting care for the environment.

“Our sports, more than any other, are outdoor sports, linked to nature,” says Susanna Sieff, sustainability director at FIS. “Our field of play is nature, and we need snow, and in our environment we can really feel and see the change.”

FIS president Johan Eliasch came onboard in 2021 already with long experience working with sustainability implementations in business and for multiple governments. He hired Sieff in 2023 to help develop a concrete path which could get all FIS disciplines involved in the sustainability transition.

Getting the whole team together

Getting the huge variety of stakeholders onboard to adopt more sustainable practice is not about handing out guidelines and mandates – at least not yet. Sieff is putting her energies towards helping each local organising committee become aware of its own unique sustainability challenges.

“You need to engage people,” says Sieff. “We started with a training course last summer to give everyone a common language to speak about climate change and the impact of their events. Then followed that up with a series of webinars to dive deeper into different aspects.”

“If you don’t have the highest quality data, it’s hard to think about sustainability, because everything is just a guess”

FIS has also issued a new tailor-made CO2 calculator which is free for all the world cup events and championships. The tool, built on the Green Producers Tool platform, is pre-loaded with data that allows the various sporting events to model in advance different scenarios. It was introduced in October of 2024.

“You can input different options and see if your efforts really are going to reduce your CO2 emissions. You might have the idea that you’re going to use only recycled bibs, but do you really know the difference in impact between recycled and normal bibs? If you know this kind of information from the beginning, you can decide where to put your money for the greatest impact.”

Real data, real engagement

Sieff’s position at FIS is just the latest step in a long career of helping winter sports to be more sustainable, up to her most recent work as head of sustainability for the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games. In her experience, data is the key ingredient of all sustainability change.

“If you don’t have the highest quality data, it’s hard to think about sustainability, because everything is just a guess,” she says. “You may want to be more sustainable and reduce private cars, but what exactly does that mean? It’s a mistake I see again and again. You need to have key performance indicators and high-quality data to see if you are on a good path or not.”

The second key driver for positive change is communication and engagement with senior leadership. Measures need to be presented to those in key positions, so they understand what is required and why.

“Keep it simple, is my advice,” she explains. “Sustainability can be something that overwhelms people. We are so used to our own habits that people really need a reason for why they should change. Sustainability is cross-functional. You can’t change unless the entire structure is changing at the same time.”

The FIS roadmap for sustainability looks ahead for the next three years and is aimed primarily at event organisers and how they can start thinking different about onsite impacts like food, energy and logistics. Engagement with broadcasters is on the agenda too, but the events themselves are the primary focus.

Each local organising committee is directly responsible for the budgets of its events and so is in a position to drive change, both at the venues and in any future sustainability engagement with broadcasters.

But Sieff believes that real change needs to come from coordination between stakeholders, not just from lines in a contract.

“Certain agreements may get people to take some action, but at the end of the day it’s not real change. It’s only about ticking the box. It’s not the kind of structural change that you need.”

The only hard sustainability rules the FIS has laid down in contracts are with the different organisers of the World Championships. These are big events that actually have the capacity and personnel to calculate CO2e emissions and water usage or implement a mandatory ISO 20121 certification, including dedicated sustainability managers.

“But if I ask the smaller organisations – who are running the World Cup in something like big air, for example – they may have only a few volunteers and instead I can offer my time and consultancy to help them do something with the resources they have.”

Peers and partnerships

The various national ski associations are also bringing onboard their own sustainability professionals and have now formed a working group of representatives from the associations which as of last count has 13 members. These sustainability managers are Sieff’s contact points for the various local organising committees. The working group meets every 6 weeks to share problems and solutions, which can vary widely across disciplines, locations and cultures.

“Sometimes in that position, you can feel a bit alone, but if you have the chance to speak with others, you can feed yourself, by sharing peer to peer with people who have the same energy and are solving the same problems.”

Most of us have clocked some of the initial signs of climate breakdown in our daily lives, but FIS sees the impacts unfolding year after year.

“Our sport is related to snow, temperatures and the season, and we can see every year that we have fewer days. We are an international federation with different calendars and it’s a very complex puzzle to put together. We do see more precipitation in Scandinavia, but less snow in the Alps,” she says.

FIS is also developing partnerships with valued organisations outside the sport. Recent collaborations with the World Meteorological Association (WMO) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have been used to both promote sustainability practices and to research climate impacts.

“It’s the first time the WMO decided to join forces with a sport organisation. And we’re working with the ESA to think outside the box and see how we can use space technology and data to understand the impact of big events on the landscape. It’s not just about the FIS family working alone, but to open up and work with others for the same purpose.”