Sport local – a vision for 2030

by Laura Baldwin, Olympic sailor

In 2030 we’ll either be fully engaged in positive, transformative adaptation or we’ll have missed the narrow window of opportunity to secure a liveable world. If we messed up, then we would be managing the effects of our crazy climate causing the collapse of our food and fresh water systems, our ecological and our social systems. My heart aches at the thought so I switch my focus. 

Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network, makes living sustainably sound tantalising and irresistible. He dresses in a spacesuit and holds up a sign that reads, ‘I’ve been to the future, and we won!’ I find that especially powerful.

So when I received the invitation to go in Rob’s spaceship (in fact a podcast) to 2030, together with Sky Sports Presenter, David Garrido, of course I leap at the opportunity, buzzing at the chance. I gave myself time to daydream, to come up with my most imaginative and desirable vision for how good things could be, if we gave it everything between now and then. 

So, here we are, we arrived in 2030. Whilst David went straight off to a football match to see how things have changed. I hopped on a bike and cycled around the local area. 

I am so thrilled to see what I am seeing and hearing. People are noticeably happier and they all look fit and healthy. Their eyes sparkle as they speak. I notice how fresh the air smells. It is clean with frequent pockets of wonderful aromas from flowers. The perfumes hit my senses with delight. A feeling that is intensifying as I see how thoughtfully the area has been returned to nature and repurposed for people. 

There are no cars packed in the residential streets, in their place I’m seeing all kinds of different uses. I love how much communal space there is now for neighbours to sit outside and eat and chat together, with plants and trees in every suitable location. There are bike storage boxes that double as climbing walls with cubby houses on top for the kids to play and zip lines between them, others are covered in living walls with beautiful wildflowers on top. Outdoor play and fitness equipment is found on every street. 

Efficient public transport, electric rail, trams, buses and taxis have removed the need for privately owned cars, reduced individual cost and eliminated stress as roads are no longer congested or polluted. I’ve seen all kinds of incredibly creative uses for cargo bikes with trailers for mobile market stalls, caterers, trades people and delivery riders zipping around with boxes piled high along with most other people who are riding around the safe cycle networks. There’s also this super smooth path for skating and scooting at top speeds that looks so much fun! It’s covered with a roof of solar panels.

Solar panels can be seen on all the roofs. People’s homes are well insulated and temperature controlled. There are only patches of grass where there is play equipment, sports grounds, picnic areas and paths, for the rest is growing food or providing habitat for nature. 

I’ve had a few chats with people that I’ve met and they told me that it was sport that led the way in making the changes happen. Sports – so often an almost invisible presence at the heart of every community, chose to showcase the needed actions in exciting, appealing and rewarding ways. Using billboards and pitch sides to advertise sustainable lifestyles rather than cars, airlines, fossil fuel companies and gambling firms. 

Slogans and posters on leisure centre walls reached everyday people in all different communities. Sports stars acted as role models, sharing their carbon reduction journeys and bringing people along with them. Sharing the qualities of the athlete mindset. Everyone got onboard incredibly quickly as they could clearly see that this was desirable. They felt a deep sense of purpose in finding their role in the transition and they are brimming with pride sharing all the contributions that they had made. 

Sports fan hubs are some of the most attractive local social places to hang out. Broadcasting sporting events on big screens when major events are happening and they are even used for the community to get together to enjoy watching the best in their towns compete to be the local sporting heroes as not everyone can see it happening inside the venues. Communities have connected and bonded stronger than ever before with sport helping to excite and unite across social divides. 

There’s been a huge refocus around food, everything is plant based, people are cooking communally, it’s been a really strong connecting force. Learning to make veggies taste delicious, sharing skills and flavours. People have realised that fresh, locally grown, organic food really is medicine and a joyful experience. 

Sport is a major factor in everybody’s lives thanks to the ditching of GDP for assessing success. I am so happy that they ditched GDP! And instead they bought in NHI, a National Happy Planet Index, a measure developed by the UK based New Economics Foundation, where success is measured on the long, happy lives of their citizens achieved with minimal impact on nature. And everyone I’ve met really does seem so happy and fulfilled with their lives. 

There has been a re-localisation for sports, boosting opportunities for everyone to participate in different sports. Focusing back to the grassroots joy of participation and improved wellbeing. It’s more about challenging yourself, bettering your skills and dabbling in all kinds of different sports than about being really good at one thing. There are still people that choose to go that route and they travel to international competitions by public transport that has become far more accessible and reliable and, most adventurously, there has been a huge upsurge in people travelling by sailboat. 

Aviation had to be grounded and initially people were shocked and angry, but sport really helped by using its power of communication to show people that pausing pollution to await solutions was essential and how positive this pause could be, how it could improve everyone’s quality of life. Through sport, people were called to set goals that excite them, that motivated them to get on with making positive changes happen. 

Everyone seems to have a strong sense of purpose. There’s much less of a feeling of a need to escape their lives. Though travel is still widely experienced, there isn’t such a need to go so far because every town has a unique character. Filled with independent shops and cafes, upcycled clothing and furniture stores, locally made arts and crafts, specialist repair cafes and loads of cool sports to enjoy. 

Green Gyms are the hippest thing to be involved in, combining exercise with restoring nature, planting trees and re-wilding suitable sections of land held by sports clubs and then taking these skills and spreading the good work out into the local area. 

Kids have reclaimed the streets, they are playing, cycling, scooting, making dens and climbing trees. What I can hear, now the noise of traffic has dimmed, is people chatting, the cheers of excitement, encouraging each other on. There’s both a serene sense of calm but also a high energy, a buzz about the place. I really like it here, can I stay? 

Knowing that the solutions do already exist and simply need scaling up and rolling out at speed makes me feel hopeful that this vision could come to life. If sport will realise its power and step up to the challenge in this, the race for our lives.