Op-ed

  • Development through sport: the EU and the Olympics

    Development through sport: the EU and the Olympics0

    Sport has become an essential tool in the European Union’s soft power approach. Over the past few years, the political vision promoting economic development through sport has become a standard practice in Europe’s policies of solidarity and sustainable development. Yet, how can the European experience help improve the Olympic ideal of using sport to promote peace and prosperity?

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  • Not-so-green games for a blue planet

    Not-so-green games for a blue planet0

    The organisers of the Rio Olympic Games promised to clean up Rio’s dangerously polluted waterways and provide sanitation for at least 80% of the inhabitants before 2016. As the games draw near, they admit that they have failed, but claim that there are no risks to athletes or to the general public.

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  • Bread and games and evictions

    Bread and games and evictions0

    The defeat of the Brazilian team at the hands (feet?) of the German Mannschaft two years ago is etched in our collective minds. The match – though remarkable – had little to do with that. What stuck was the reaction of the public and the images of heartbroken football fans that went around the globe. They showed a nation that had betted a lot on football – and lost.

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  • Rio 2016’s Unenduring Legacy

    Rio 2016’s Unenduring Legacy0

    The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro have been heralded from the start as ‘legacy games’. One key component of the Rio 2016 legacy plan is increased sport participation for low-income children and youth, with a number of public programs set up, and substantial funding channeled, toward this goal. One month before the Games are scheduled to begin, however, this legacy has yet to leave a lasting mark.

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  • The Rio Olympics: Green or a Greenwash?

    The Rio Olympics: Green or a Greenwash?1

    Rio won the honour to host the Olympic Games on the idealistic promise it will leave a “sustainable legacy”. There is, however, a distinct difference between the ideal and the reality when the Olympic Sustainable Management Plan fails to combat the booming Brazilian illegal wildlife trade. The international community are on one hand promoting Rio as green, but on the other accepting their contribution to what the UN has recently found to be ‘an unprecedented threat to wildlife’ by allowing Rio to host the world’s biggest international sporting event.

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  • Who’s afraid of the big (bad) EU?

    Who’s afraid of the big (bad) EU?0

    The reason to stay in the post-Brexit EU should not be based on fear.

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