World Athletics wins Organisation of the Year at BBC Green Sport Awards

World Athletics was named Elite Organisation of the Year at the BBC Green Sport Awards in London recently, in recognition of its ambitious initiatives to encourage and demonstrate action on environmental and climate change issues over the past year.

World Athletics was credited for several initiatives, including the implementation of its Athletics for a Better World Standard, a system that evaluates an event's environmental, social and local economic impacts and benefits that has been incorporated into the event bidding and licencing process.

Speaking on the impact of the Athletics for a Better World Standard, which now requires events to consider environmental and social impacts in their planning and delivery, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said: “Inclusion of sustainability metrics into our bidding criteria helps as a catalyst for change. In order to successfully bid for our events, it might actually demand greater focus on an event's environmental impact."

Collaboration, Coe said, is also a core component of the Standard.

"Let us use sport as an amplifying voice. I will go to my grave fundamentally believing that sport is a key vehicle for change. It doesn't always happen quickly. It doesn't happen overnight. But I've rarely seen a sport go into any political, cultural or national environment that hasn't actually flicked the dial socially or politically."

Through its Green Sport Awards, BBC Sport aims to celebrate the good news - the athletes, former athletes and organisations working hard to enact and inspire change.

The other nominees for ‘Elite Organisation of the Year’ include the motorsport series Extreme E, organisers of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) and World Rugby.W