Abstract

Every major sporting event claims to be a celebration of human potential.  The current air, often saturated with PM₂.₅ concentrations that drift into the nauseous global warming trends, creates a milieu in which even ordinary breathing becomes laborious. Medical research has long warned that such exposure affects oxygen uptake and triggers inflammation within hours. For athletes conditioned to operate at the most unforgiving thresholds of performance, this is not a trivial inconvenience but a structural disadvantage. The issue, crucially, is not limited to athletic performance. It aligns squarely with human-rights obligations that the host states are yet to articulate both domestically and internationally. The question is whether the hosting venues will sit under air of a quality that does not endanger the very people invited to use them. If the State cannot offer that assurance, the Games may serve as a global reminder that ambition cannot outrun smog, and that human rights however eloquently articulated must survive contact with the air we breathe.

Introduction

International sports are entering a fortuitous era of competing physiologically among competitors, psychologically with strained climatic conditions, and in toto against environmental governance. When an athlete collapses on the track or records suboptimal performance, the legal fiction that international sport is insulated from climate risk is exposed, revealing the athletic excellence and the mental contest waged against environmental extremes. International climate rights jurisprudence has well substantiated the state’s responsibility to prevent reasonably foreseeable climate-induced harms that endanger human life or health, and it has imputed an obligation to protect human autonomy and physical integrity. The derelictions of these rights amount to a breach of fundamental rights. The health authorities have reported an increase in occurrences of sustained physical exertion classified as “high risk” under conditions of extreme heat, unsafe air quality, and intensifying humidity. Yet the regulatory framework governing global sport persists in treating environmental externalities as operational exigencies as opposed to legally cognisable threats to athletes’ health. This disjunction underscores a significant normative gap thwarting the prospectively discernible component of climatic stress in international sports intertwined with an unvetted nexus concerning obligations of host states. 

International Legal Framework

A plurality of formally recognised international imperatives enfolds multiple coherent responsibilities imposed on host states to protect health in a climate-stressed sporting environment. Article 4 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC)  enjoins states to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on human health, thereby accentuating the obligation directly implicated when athletes compete in a surrounding milieu to acute psychological stress, concomitantly Article7 construed together with Article 8 of the Paris Agreement substantiates an adaptation measures requiring states to anticipate and administer climate impacts that recognises climate related loss and damage to health as a legally relevant harm. Taken in conjunction, these provisions affirm that climatically precipitated risks to athletes are no longer incidental but reasonably foreseeable health impacts arising within the scope of prevailing climate obligations. 

Augmenting these obligations, the WHO Climate and Health Framework normative guidelines decisively identify extreme heat, humidity, and degraded air quality as high-risk exposures for “high-exertion activities,” explicitly observing that physical performance environments must integrate climate-resilient health safeguards. 

The UNESCO International Charter of Physical Education, Activity and Sports (2015) places a normative expectation on States to regulate environmental risks in sporting contexts, ensuring that participation in sport occurs under safe and healthy conditions. Analogously, the Olympic Charter, through its fundamental principles, establishes that respect for human dignity and the safe practice of sport are foundational commitments for any State hosting global competitions. Therefore, when the climatic conditions threaten these core principles, the failure to mitigate environmental hazards engages policy concerns and contests the responsibility of the host state. 

Climate Jurisprudence and the Human Rights Interface

Contemporaneous climate jurisprudence provides a clear doctrinal basis for recognising the intricately intertwined nature of climate-induced environmental conditions and legal responsibilities of States hosting sporting events. The rationale in  Neubauer v. Germany (2021) affirms that States shall not reallocate climate burdens onto groups who are disproportionately affected. Athletes, particularly non-residents of the host state, who perform under extreme exertion and constitute a population uniquely vulnerable to climate-linked health risks, thereby falling within the Neubauer protective rationale. The Colombian Amazon decision (2018) reinforced the holding by reiterating that large-scale environmental degradation directly bears upon fundamental rights, including the rights to life, health, and a healthy environment. This principle established unequivocally that degraded air quality, whether due to urban pollution, wildfire smoke, or heat-related ozone spikes, constitutes not merely an environmental inconvenience but a rights-based concern that host states must confront. 

A convergent view is discernible from broadly acknowledged and juridically enforced human rights instruments. The Human Rights Committee’s General Comment no. 36 confirms that the right to life under Article 6 of ICCPR, alongside the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, recognising that climate impacts disproportionately affect individuals engaged in high-risk outdoor activities, encompasses the protection against foreseeable environmental threats, thereby directly implicating competing athletes in a stressed and polluted environment. 

Cross Country Event Analysis

Analogous transnational international sporting events established that climate-related risks to athletes are not merely discrete irregularities but an outcome of globally foreseeable hazards. 

The 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha demonstrate that undertaking partial adaptation measures does not discharge the obligation to anticipate and manage environmental risks when climatic conditions exceed recognised safety thresholds. During the event, the temperature reached the extreme danger category, resulting in well-documented cases of heat stress among competitors. At the same time, response measures such as midnight scheduling and increased medical stations proved insufficient. Similar constraints arose during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, where official heat alerts, athlete withdrawal, and event rescheduling reflected the inevitable call for resilience measures in a warming environment. This experience highlighted a crucial legal juncture, where climatic stress is reasonably foreseeable, states must integrate adaptation measures not as reactive remedial measures but as an integral element of event planning consistent with their duties under international climate and human rights law. The 2020 Australian Open further substantiated how climate-linked hazards disrupt the sporting environment as the outbreak of wildfire smoke led to coughing fits, medical timeouts, and match delays. Collectively, these instances establish a global pattern in which climate stress is becoming a foreseeable feature of international sport, occasioning corresponding duties of protection for host states. 

Analysing State Responsibility

The fundamental benchmark initiating State responsibility in a climate-stressed sporting environment is foreseeability. The prevailing scientific understanding of rising temperatures, humidity spikes, and deteriorating urban air quality affirms that heat and pollution threats are not conjectural but foreseeable features of modern-day urban environments. Once a threat is foreseeable, host states assume positive obligations to regulate the conditions under which international sporting events occur, including scheduling, environmental quality thresholds, and emergency preparedness. These obligations are executed by hosting states through due diligence and the adoption of reasonable measures proportionate to the known risk. In the sporting context, such measures include heat-responsive scheduling windows, venue design that can mitigate thermal loads, continuous air quality monitoring, and the establishment of cooling and medical response systems. The legal omission of such measures constitutes a potential breach of their international obligation grounded in the State’s failure to act with the level of diligence mandated by international climate, environmental, and human rights law.

Conclusion

The underlying conditions under which international sport is organised and performed have taken a turn towards climate change. As climate stress becomes a structural feature of global sport, states must situate adaptation measures not as ancillary logistical choices but as integral components of their legal obligations. The international legal framework unequivocally establishes that States cannot host sporting events without ensuring an aligned environment that safeguards the health and physical integrity of participants. Global sporting events cannot be shielded from reality; nor can States remain sequestered from their legal responsibilities. Therefore, failure to integrate climate-responsive measures into event planning and regulation amounts to a breach of international responsibility.