Advancing climate change resilience of the Winter Olympic-Paralympic Games

Abstract

Winters are changing and reshaping winter sport worldwide. The paper identiifes a range of strategies to advance the climate resilience of the Winter Olympics-Paralympics and examines the challenges associated with two vital climate adaptations. (1) Selecting climate reliable hosts is essential to de-risk future Games. It also raises the question whether the current ‘one bid, one city’ Winter Games partnership can survive in an era of climate change? (2) Criticism of the reliance on snowmaking at the Winter Games is widespread. How integral is snowmaking to the future of the Winter Games and how can it be made more sustainable?.