On the eve of the Olympic Games Paris 2024, an unprecedented summit in the interests of sport, youth and sustainable development

At the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron and IOC President Thomas Bach, the Summit brought together 500 participants – heads of state and government, heads of international organisations and public banks, members of the Olympic Movement and socially committed athletes, representatives of civil society and young citizens – and gave rise to ambitious and measurable political, financial and sporting commitments.

On the political level, the commitments of the Paris Agreement for Sport and Sustainable Development received the support of more than 60 heads of state and government and heads of international organisations, including the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who issued a call for the participants to join the Summit of the Future in September. This Agreement, to which the Olympic Movement has signed up, consists of 10 commitments around the five main priorities of the Summit (see Annex):

-    education and employment, to make sport accessible to all school-age children in the world for at least 30 minutes a day, and to promote employability and the acquisition of skills through sport, which is the third largest area of education after family and school;

-    health and nutrition, to reduce the prevalence of physical inactivity by 15% by 2030 and improve the health, nutrition and well-being of individuals, in the run-up to the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in March 2025, and given that high-school students have lost a quarter of their physical capacity over the last 40 years;

-    equality and inclusion, to make physical activity and sport accessible to all, given that one in three women do not manage to practise sufficient physical activity and that 15% of the world's population has a disability, with a particular focus on the situation of refugees;

-    financing and impact measurement, to unlock the full potential of sport through the mobilisation of investments and impact measurement;

-    sustainability and legacy, to organise more sustainable and responsible sporting events, aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement. The President of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, thus confirmed his intention to host the second edition of the #Sport4SD Summit during the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Dakar in 2026, the first Olympic event ever organised in Africa.

On the sporting front, the heads of some of the biggest international sports competitions have announced significant commitments:

 

-    The IOC, through its President, Thomas Bach, has announced a 10% increase in its budget dedicated to Olympic Solidarity (USD 650 million for 2025-2028). This will support athletes and sports development programmes around the globe, and includes a budget increase to support National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in their endeavours to actively contribute to the IOC’s strategy to strengthen the role of sport as an important enabler for the UN SDGs.

-    LA28, through its Chairperson, Casey Wasserman, will execute on its USD 160 million commitment to subsidise and expand youth sport at Los Angeles parks in the years leading up to 2028.

-    FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced an ambitious programme to install 1,000 sustainable football pitches in schools in support of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This initiative is part of FIFA's Football for Schools programme, which aims to make football more accessible to boys and girls, and to strengthen the life skills of young people through football. FIFA reinvests the majority of the revenue generated by its flagship competitions in the development of football. Over the period from 2016 to 2026, through the FIFA Forward programme in FIFA's 211 member countries, USD 5 billion will be invested in the sustainable development of football, everywhere and for everyone. This represents a strong global commitment to youth and the future.

-    NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum announced that the NBA will work with the French Development Agency (AFD) and other partners around the world to build 1,000 basketball courts in Africa over the next decade. The initiative is part of the league's efforts to create more spaces for young people to learn and play basketball, and demonstrates its commitment to using the transformative power of basketball to contribute to Africa's sporting ecosystem and socio-economic development.

-    The aim is for the Sport for Sustainable Development Summit to become a recurring event at major sporting events.

On the financial front, the Summit resulted in these first concrete announcements:

-    Public development banks and other institutions united in the Sustainable Development through Sport1 coalition of the Finance in Common (FiCS) movement commit to investing USD 10 billion, at domestic and international level, in community-based, inclusive and sustainable sports infrastructure by 2030 – the deadline for the SDGs.

-    The first Impact Fund for Development through Sport will be presented for financial endowment at the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Sport for Development on the 24th and 25th of October 2024 in Pescara, and then in early 2025 at the fifth FiCS Summit in South Africa.

 

-    For the first time, Proparco and IFC – the private arms of AFD Group and the World Bank Group respectively – have joined forces with Helios Sports and Entertainment Group to significantly increase investment in the sports and entertainment industries in Africa. This major partnership will serve as a catalyst in the development of the ecosystem, promoting economic opportunities as well as social inclusion.

-    AFD Group will invest EUR 500 million in sport for sustainable development by 2030.

To advance shared knowledge on this new and innovative subject, the World Bank Group and the French Development Agency will work together on a new report that will explore sport’s contribution to sustainable development.

Finally, to measure the impact of these commitments, the participants undertook to implement an aligned, consistent evaluation approach and took note of the creation of a French Institute for Research on Sport and Sustainable Development, with the support of several private-sector stakeholders.

As part of the Sport4SD Summit, a first inventory of states’ initiatives in the field of sport and sustainable development and their additional commitments was carried out and is accessible on the dedicated website of the #Sport4SD Summit (here.)

• "Sport, a driver of solidarity and self-betterment, must allow us to move forward to meet so many of our common challenges, and in particular to invest in our next generations of athletes: education, health, nutrition. It is with this conviction in mind that we are hosting the first Sport for Sustainable Development Summit at the Louvre, with a particular focus on our youth. Our goal is to win, as a team, this game against fate, and for future generations. Here in Paris, we must write a new page in our sporting, fraternal and universal history," said Emmanuel Macron, President of France.

• "The Olympic Games are sport. And more than just sport. Sport is health. It's inclusion. It's respect. It’s solidarity. It's peace. With our Olympic Agenda reforms, the IOC is committed to strengthening the role of sport as an important partner in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Whatever your mission: join us in making the world a better place through sport," added Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

• "It is a great honour to have been tasked with making possible the largest ever summit on Sport for Sustainable Development. AFD Group, with its subsidiaries Proparco and Expertise France, will continue to engage on this issue with all its partners, particularly within the framework of the Finance in Common movement," said Rémy Rioux, Director General of the French Development Agency (AFD) and Chairman of the Finance in Common (FiCS) movement.

About the International Olympic Committee

The International Olympic Committee is an international non-governmental, civil and not-for- profit volunteer organisation committed to building a better world through sport. It redistributes more than 90% of its revenue to the wider sports movement, which is the equivalent of USD 4.2 million every day to help athletes and sports organisations at all levels around the world.

About AFD Group

AFD Group contributes to the implementation of France's policy on sustainable development and international solidarity. Composed of the French Development Agency (AFD), in charge of financing the public sector and NGOs, research and training; its subsidiary Proparco, dedicated to financing and supporting the private sector; and Expertise France, a technical cooperation agency, the Group finances, supports and accelerates the transitions necessary for a fairer and more resilient world in more than 150 countries, as well as in 11 French overseas departments and territories, and through nearly 5,000 projects on the ground, thus contributing to the commitment of France and the French people to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For a world in common.

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