Climate scientists have warned about the climate emergency for more than 40 years now. The message is simple: if we fail to quickly limit our ecological footprint (quantified through carbon emissions or other indicators), irreversible changes and disruptions of ecosystems, economies and societies will occur.
In the health domain, there is now a consensus that climate change dramatically affects human health and jeopardises the health of future generations. Climate change is clearly an all-encompassing influence on health, thus justifying the title of this present discussion paper: “Climate change: the next game changer for sport and exercise psychology”.
In our opinion there should be no debate about the major and increasing influence that climate change will have on the field of sport of exercise psychology in the next years, like any other scientific disciplines, or even broader aspects of our lives. How the field will contribute to climate change adaptation (i.e., reactive responses) and mitigation (i.e., proactive responses), however, is subject to discussion. The present paper aims to be one of the starting points for this discussion.
In sport and physical activity (PA) sciences, a recent systematic review has examined the bidirectional associations between PA domains, sport practices and climate change issues. Furthermore, researchers from sport-related disciplines have developed ambitious projects to address climate change: sport management researchers have investigated the climate vulnerability of sport organizations and developed interventions to improve sport events’ sustainability; exercise physiologists have examined the associations between heat stress and exercise or athletes’ performances; sport medicine doctors have presented the intensification of allergens and air pollutants’ deleterious effects for athletes; sport philosophers have questioned a possible anthropocentric to ecocentric sport model in deep ecology perspective ; and social scientists and anthropologists have analyzed and denounced the greenwashing strategies of the sport industry and added expressions of slow sport (e.g., Nordic walking, long-distance hiking) into the broader concept of the slow movement. It seems that psychology of PA and sport is lagging behind these disciplines.
For instance, in his excellent text, Raab questioned presidents of academic associations related to psychology of sport and exercise about their respective vision of our discipline in 2050. Although their responses were original and well-argued (e.g., integration of sport psychologists in international organizations such as World Health Organization), climate change was not part of their vision. Climate change was only indirectly mentioned in suggesting that the United Nations sustainable development goals should be adopted in the psychology of PA and sport.
This text argues that sport and exercise psychology, as a scientific discipline, needs to address anthropogenic climate change by helping athletes, sport students, psychologists, coaches, physical educators, youth, sport communities and stakeholders, and all populations concerned and impacted by our field, to understand and adopt climate change adaptation and mitigation behaviors to ultimately trigger social changes in their respective communities.
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