Editorial: Environmental Sustainability in Sports, Physical Activity and Education, and Outdoor Life

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is one of the most urgent and complex “big issues” facing the contemporary world, as highlighted by its centrality to many of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Environmental sustainability issues take many forms, including: climate change and carbon emissions, waste management, pollution and environmental degradation, the use of scarce natural resources such as water, the use of “dirty” and “clean” energy, the production and recycling of consumer items, and the impacts of modern living on biodiversity and the natural world. Environmental sustainability is of critical importance to the fields of sports, physical activity and education, and outdoor life, in a whole range of ways. For example, the development of facilities and equipment for these activities requires the use of scarce natural resources, and has significant impacts on the natural environment; the staging of sport events often carries a large carbon footprint and generates vast material waste; physical exercise in many settings carries substantial environmental risks, such as air pollution or excess heat; and, participation in outdoor life activities, such as mountaineering or canoeing, may threaten local biodiversity and micro-climates. Issues of environmental sustainability thus have crucial significance for sport, physical activity and education, and outdoor living, at many different levels: in terms of geographical scale (local, national, regional, and global), in terms of types of activity involvement (as participants and players, spectators, organizers, and investors), and in terms of varieties of expertise and commitment (as professionals, elite competitors, amateurs, and informal participants). The goal of this Research Topic is to advance knowledge and understanding of the environment and environmental sustainability in the three fields of sport, physical activity and education, and outdoor life. Our aim in developing this Research Topic has been to publish papers that draw on a diversity of disciplinary groundings, and to encompass a broad range of approaches relating to theory, methods, empirical content, and relevance for policy and practice.