Postcards From the Future: Polluted Sport in a Changing Climate

Abstract

How is climate change affecting young athletes? Taking inspiration from the concepts of “polluted leisure” and “climatic affective atmospheres”, this article reveals how participating in sports (i.e., surfing, surf lifesaving, waka ama, kayaking, rowing) undertaken in/on rivers, oceans, and beaches damaged and destroyed by a changing climate are surfacing new affective and embodied relations with “polluted sport.” The analysis of focus groups and photographic montages with 45 young athletes (54% Māori and 50% female) reveals the agentic capacities of polluted sporting environments—logs, sewage, debris—and how new health risks, fear, anger, frustration and eco-grief were surfaced through young athletes’ immersion in climatic affective atmospheres. For some, such embodied experiences prompted new modes of environmental care and action. Ultimately, this paper highlights the importance of listening to, and learning from, young people immersed in sporting environments already being impacted by climate change. Our research also reveals the importance of Indigenous ways of knowing polluted sporting environments as highly relational, agentic and intimately connected to health, well-being, healing and performance.