Qatar: Air traffic casts doubt on carbon neutrality claim

The 2022 football World Cup in Qatar was promoted as a carbon-neutral event. Ahead of the sporting extravaganza, international football's governing body FIFA stated on its website that tournament organizers were "commited to deliver a carbon neutral FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022."

Further, FIFA stated: "The compact nature of the FIFA World Cup 2022 will eliminate the long-distance travel between sites typically required for other FIFA World Cups and will thus reduce associated carbon emissions."

"We have a very compact tournament and no flights within the country, as other World Cup tournaments would have," Talar Sahsuvaroglu, the World Cup Organizing Committee's environment and sustainability manager, said in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF. 

But these statements are misleading, as our research shows.

A Greenhouse Gas Accounting Report prepared for FIFA and published ahead of the tournament in June 2021, had estimated that the total World Cup greenhouse gas emission would amount to approximately 3.6 million tons of CO2 (MtCO2e). Most of those greenhouse gases would come from flights and accommodation for expected visitors, as well as the construction of seven new stadiums, among other infrastructure projects, said organizers.

At 51.7%, the majority of estimated emissions were attributed to travel.

The report said organizers "have pledged to measure, mitigate and offset all FIFA World Cup 2022 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while advancing low-carbon solutions in Qatar and the region." These calculations and promises, however, have been questioned by a range of experts.

Was the Qatar FIFA World Cup really carbon neutral?

An October 2022 analysis by the nonprofit environment group Carbon Market Watch questioned the carbon-neutral label, saying organizers had likely dramatically underestimated "the tournament's true emissions levels and climate impact" with regard to the construction, operation and long-term use of football stadiums. It also questioned the proposed carbon offsetting mechanisms.

Qatar — a country of about2.9 million people — claims the new stadiums will be repurposed. But, according to media reports, critics say the plans are ill-defined.

More recently, however, attention has shifted to air travel connected to the tournament. FIFA's 2021 Greenhouse Gas Accounting Report said that all "stadiums will be within 50 kilometers [31 miles] of the center of Qatar's capital city, Doha, keeping travel between matches to a minimum."

Most emissions would come from transport, according to official estimates. Yet these did not include shuttle flights that transported spectators into the desert city each day, Gilles Dufrasne of Carbon Market Watch, a Brussels-based NGO, told DW.

Because of a shortage of accommodation in Qatar, an estimated 150 flights a day took off from neighboring countries, including Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to media reports.

Qatar is a small country. Spanning around 11,500 square kilometers (4,400 square miles), the Gulf monarchy is even smaller than the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, or the US state of Connecticut.

Lack of accommodations 

Media reports ahead of and during the tournament indicated a shortage of fan accommodations and in particular, a lack of affordably priced options. A significant share of hotel rooms had reportedly been reserved for football teams, their entourages, officials, and sponsors.

The BBC reported some 30,000 available hotel rooms by March, though exact accommodation figures are impossible to ascertain. DW contacted Visit Qatar and other government bodies requesting detailed accommodation figures and occupancy rates, but received no response.

German aviation expert Steffen Wenzel told DW Qatar's apparent accommodations shortage left football fans with little choice but to fly in from abroad.

He also said given the geographical distances involved and in the absence of a regional rail network, flying was the only realistic option for fans.

Many fans therefore opted to stay in neighboring countries. The official German team fan club, for instance, chose to base itself in Dubai, the largest city in the UAE. Jan Hongsermeier, a spokesperson for the fan club, told DW they would have preferred a more sustainable option and had wanted to stay in Qatar, saying "organization issues" forced them to resort to Dubai.

Julia Zeyn, a German football fan coordinator who was recently in Qatar, told DW "it was clear that the narrative of carbon neutrality simply couldn't be true simply because inbound travel options were focused on the airport, leaving few other options [but to fly]."

Additional flights and reopening of an old airport

Scores of airlines offered same-day shuttle flights to and from Qatar for fans to fly in, watch football matches and return within 24 hours. Not only that, Doha International Airport, which was closed to commercial airlines in 2014 when Hamad International Airport (HIA) opened, was specifically reactivated to cope with the expected rise in air traffic.

"Flight movement tracker flightaware.com shows a noticeable rise in arrivals and departures at HIA between November 20 and December 12, with up to 586 flight movements in a single day." 

An even more striking picture was presented by the Doha airport. Whereas in previous months and years the total number of arrivals and departures rarely reached 50, flight movements increased fourfold between November 20 and December 2. Recently, they stood at approximately 200 flight movements per day.

Not too long ago, Qatar's Civil Aviation Authority proudly tweeted that 18,298 total aircraft movements had occurred in the first three weeks of the tournament.

In light of this pronounced air traffic, many experts question Qatar's carbon neutrality claim. Julien Jreissati of Greenpeace has been quoted in the press doubting whether the 3.6 megatons of carbon dioxide World Cup estimate is realistic given these frequent shuttle flights.

All mega sporting events have an impact on the environment. The Qatari tournament, however, deserves extra scrutiny because organizers are parading the carbon-neutral message, said Dufrasne of Carbon Market Watch.

"FIFA and the Qatari organizers made the decision — which they did not have to — to make a green campaign out of it and say it's carbon neutral. And that's where things got problematic for us," said Dufrasne.

Note: DW contacted various Qatari authorities requesting exact flight movement data for the world cup period, figures regarding cost and availability of Qatar-based fan accommodation as well as expected and actual visitor numbers.

Neither Representatives of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, Qatar's Civil Aviation Authority, the Qatar Government Communications Office nor Visit Qatar responded to multiple requests for comment.

Jan Walter and Rachel Baig contributed to this report

Edited by: Kathrin Wesolowski