Gregor Paul: The All Blacks’ lost opportunity to be seen as champions of the environment

It was 35 degrees in Paris the day the World Cup kicked off, a stifling, crippling heat that had barely receded by 9pm when the All Blacks ran out to playthe hosts.

Temperatures across France were just as oppressive over that opening weekend, and locals were adamant they had never known such searing heat so late into their summer.

Even when the All Blacks returned to Paris for quarterfinal week, a month after that opening game, the temperature was 29 degrees, and with wildfires having ravaged Greece earlier in the summer and New Zealand hit by catastrophic weather events in January, the impact of climate change is being felt more severely in 2023 than it ever has.

Playing that opening game in 30-degree heat took both sets of players to the brink of their physical and mental limits, and with this tournament having been mostly played against the backdrop of unseasonable temperatures that required World Rugby to sanction water breaks, climate-change activists and environmental groups are hopeful that the sport will start to take action to lessen its carbon footprint.

But mostly they hope that rugby’s executive class will deepen its commitment to sustainability issues by cutting all ties with the fossil fuel industry and stop making itself a veritable laundry through which some of the world’s worst polluters are conducting egregious sports washing.

Rugby’s environmental impact has been put under scrutiny after the tournament organisers pronounced it would be the greenest World Cup in history.

It was a claim that appeared to be made on the basis that 83 per cent of the travel undertaken by the 20 teams in France would be completed by train.

There was also an announcement made about a carbon absorption strategy – details of which have not been made clear – and that 200,000 medals made from recycled mobile phones collected by rugby clubs would be presented to travelling fans.

A statement released by the organising committee two weeks before the tournament, said: “Faced with the urgency of climate change, France 2023 is rolling out large-scale initiatives to avoid and reduce the CO2 emissions generated by Rugby World Cup 2023 activities. The climate emergency is now at the heart of our concerns.”

But despite the claims about being the greenest ever World Cup, the tournament organisers signed TotalEnergies – one of Europe’s largest gas and oil companies – as a sponsor, which led to Greenpeace releasing an animated video of oil spilling into Stade de France in the week the tournament kicked off.

“Integrity, passion, solidarity, discipline and respect – those are rugby values,” Greenpeace campaigner Edina Ifticene said, shortly before Rugby World Cup Ltd issued a cease and desist letter asking for the video to be removed.

“But fossil fuel companies like TotalEnergies piggyback those values by sponsoring popular sports events like the Rugby World Cup, to distract everyone from their climate destruction.

“Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies won’t stop extracting fossil fuels – even though they know it’s jeopardizing a liveable future for us all – because they like the record-breaking profits they’re making.”

Land Rover is also a tournament sponsor with fleets of its petrol vehicles being driven around host venues by volunteers, and while rugby’s showpiece event continues to have such a strong financial link to an oil and gas conglomerate and a car manufacturer specialising in SUVs, doubts will remain as to whether it does indeed have the ecological welfare of the planet at the heart of its concerns.

While the world deals with a climate crisis, rugby is dealing with its own financial crisis and seemingly, given its willingness to take money from some of the world’s worst polluters, it sees the former as a solution to the latter.

Environmentalists are hoping that a leader will emerge within the rugby family to take a stand against dirty money and champion green causes.

But they have little hope it will be the All Blacks, the game’s most iconic brand and culturally influential rugby team, who will lead the fight against climate change as the organisers, it is believed, have measured the carbon footprint of each nation at the World Cup, and ranked them as the dirtiest team in France.

Stuck in a remote corner of the Pacific, 20,000 km from many of their rivals, the All Blacks will always be battling to lessen their carbon footprint.

It’s the reality of their high-performance world that every year, 30-plus players and management have to be flown around the world – to South Africa, Japan, Argentina and Europe.

But it’s also a reality that New Zealand, and the wider South Seas Pacific region, is on the front line of climate change.

New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson says that his organisation has completed research to better understand its carbon emissions and acknowledges that the single greatest challenge the All Blacks have in lessening their carbon footprint is the scale of the travel they must undertake to fulfil their fixtures.

“We are lucky to have a great relationship with Air New Zealand, a partner who we believe we can work with to ensure our [sustainability] strategy is meaningful and impactful,” says Robinson.

“Distance is obviously an issue for countries like New Zealand and our Pacific neighbours in terms of travel, so we know this is an issue that resonates throughout the rugby world and something we can all tackle together.

“We also know a lot of our player base are passionate about the environment and the climate, so we are no different to anyone else in that it’s an issue that affects us all.

“It is great to see World Rugby taking action to reduce the travel impact of teams during the World Cup and our team have been playing their part using electric scooters as well as catching trains rather than planes between venues.”

The All Blacks players have also requested that they be provided with water dispensers at this World Cup so they are not using endless individual plastic bottles.

But while NZR says it is developing a sustainability strategy and that it has hired a dedicated corporate social responsibility manager to lead it, activists feel that the most prominent sporting entity in the country could be doing more to present itself as a solution to climate change.

Throughout the time the All Blacks have been in France, there have been two petrol-engine Ineos Grenadiers available to the team and management, while Robinson can’t answer whether NZR’s sponsorship deal with Air New Zealand includes a carbon off-set option in the financial arrangements.

Also, while the team have mostly travelled to and from their base and venue cities by train, it is understood that one of their sponsors, Ineos, wanted to fly head coach Ian Foster a short distance by private jet to complete a commercial activity.

And its NZR’s association with Ineos, rated in 2020 as the worst polluter in Scotland, which activists say is the greatest barrier to the national body being taken seriously as an organisation that cares about the environment.

Ineos, which has petrochemical, gas and automotive interests, is paying $10m a year to have its name on the back of the All Blacks shorts.

“We have already experienced climate fuelled disasters this year and my concern is that the All Blacks are a treasured institution, and they have a lot of respect and mana throughout both our Māori and Pacific communities,” says Greenpeace plastics campaigner Juressa Lee.

“They get players from our Māori and Pacific communities, and you will see many of our young rugby players idolise and look up to the All Blacks team and aspire to be an All Blacks and I feel that it puts Māori and Pacific players and Māori and Pacific rugby fans in a position where we are supporting without choice.

“We want to enjoy and partake in this big national institution of the game of rugby knowing that sponsorship from Ineos, that they are using our game and using our players to basically greenwash the destruction that they are causing and that is directly affecting our communities and families.”

Greenpeace, and other organisations, felt that NZR prioritised money over sustainability by partnering with Ineos, and that the All Blacks, with their global reputation for excellence, innovation and consistent excellence, could have found a sponsor that wasn’t knee-deep in fossil fuels.

“They have a reputation, and they could have used that to negotiate something much better, and I think they also have a responsibility to the broader society to put more effort and give that priority to finding and aligning themselves better,” says Lee.

“They have the means to have done a better job than they did and should have prioritised. We are in the midst of a climate crisis that no one can debate that anymore.

“We are past the point of climate denial so I feel that if there is any sporting team within our country who could have drawn a line in the sand then it should have been the All Blacks.”

As the Herald reported in July 2021, NZR had been in advanced negotiations with Amazon about becoming the front of jersey sponsor.

The US-based conglomerate had been willing to offer $20m a year to promote its Climate Pledge initiative - a pact that was announced by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019 and is aimed at making signatories – major corporations such as Unilever, Microsoft and Mercedez Benz are on board - accountable to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years early.

Amazon was looking to spend $10 billion on promoting Climate Pledge through iconic sports brands, but for NZR to have accepted the deal, it would have had to have complied with the pledge and it was concerned it would not have been able to have met the criteria quickly enough.

The deal fell over and the chance for the All Blacks to be seen as champions of the environment was lost.

The cost of that lost opportunity is that NZR and its equity partner Silver Lake, have ambitious plans to win and monetise millions of new, younger fans – plans that will be harder to fulfil because of the association with Ineos.

Tackling climate change and environmental issues are seen by most New Zealanders under the age of 30 as the highest priority.

Robinson says he accepts this fact and that his organisation needs to build a robust and compelling sustainability story if it is to convert millennials and Generation Z into All Blacks fans.

But he says that he believes NZR can still be taken seriously as a credible protector of the planet despite its multi-million sponsorship with Ineos.

“We are proud to partner with Ineos,” says Robinson. “It is one of the world’s leading science and engineering companies and we believe it is genuine in its desire to help world tackle the challenge of climate change.

“Ineos is among those to commit to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

“It has published roadmaps for each business to achieve net zero and a shorter-term focus of reducing operational emissions by 33 per cent by 2030. New Zealand Rugby can learn a lot from a partner like Ineos in both high performance and science.”

Both Ineos and NZR deny they are guilty of sportswashing. They say their partnership came about because Ineos founder and owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is a sports nut and saw an opportunity to promote the brand in a more effective way than spending millions on advertising.

Ineos director Tom Crotty says Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest man, wouldn’t even recognise the term sportswashing.

He also says that Ineos is not part of the problem, but in fact the solution to halting the climate change crisis, arguing that the petrochemical giant has a clear strategy to be ‘net zero’ by 2050.

But the central plank of Ineos’ argument to refute that it is flooding the All Blacks with money to buy better brand perception, is that commercial sport needs sponsors and the fossil fuel industry is less of an evil than online gambling outlets, junk food providers and brewers.

“I think betting is a seriously dangerous thing to be seen to be promoting sport,” says Crotty.

“Some people would say the same about alcohol – we have the Guinness Six Nations. Is that right? I am not sure it is.

“Ultimately, commercial sport requires sponsorship. How do we do that in a way that keeps everybody happy?

“What we have to do as sponsors of sport is have an argument that says give us all the shit we want but here are all the facts, we are not doing this for sportswashing.

“It doesn’t even cross our mind and if you ask Jim, you would have to explain to him what you meant by sportswashing because he has done this as a fan of sport and he finds this a fun way of promoting us as a brand.

“All we can do is tell people what we are doing and tell them that we are not out there destroying the earth. Whether they believe us or not is up to them.”

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.

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