Funding will depend on fighting climate crisis, warns Sport England
Last updated on .From the section Sport
Sport England will ask sports to do more to fight against climate change as a condition of receiving funding.
The body invests more than £300m of public money every year to numerous organisations, including the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Rugby Football Union.
Chairman Chris Boardman will unveil Sport England's plans at a summit in Bristol on Thursday.
"The status quo is no longer an option," he told the Guardian.
Meetings with sports will begin next month, with Boardman adding he hopes a full plan will be in place by December.
"Without veering into hyperbole, it's so that we don't all die," said former Olympic cycling champion Boardman.
Sport England provides between £10m and £25m to a number of major sporting bodies over a five-year period, and smaller sums to hundreds of other groups funding grassroots sport.
"Fundamentally we have got to move from a position of 'inform and encourage' to one of 'enable and require'," added Boardman.
"In a sense it's like marginal gains in sport. Ironically, rather than set a large target years in the future, we are asking what small things we can do now and what will that add up to? And I suspect it will be an awful lot."
CORRECTION: The headline of this article originally suggested that sports could be stripped of funding if they did not commit to doing more to tackle climate change. That has been amended as Sport England says it is the level of funding that could be impacted by climate action plans.
