Mainly known for its extreme deserts and heat, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was selected on October 4 for the organization of the Panasian Winter Games of 2029. That the sum of these two information produces cognitive dissonance will surprise anyone. Even less in the context of the controversies that already surround the next Football World Cup, scheduled this fall on the ground of another country of the Arabian Peninsula, Qatar, in air -conditioned air -conditioned stadiums.
China opened the way in February, during the Winter Olympic Games organized in Beijing, with completely artificial snow for the first time. The kingdom pushes the limits of the absurd even further, with the planned ski and speed skating events. Admittedly, it can happen that it is snowing, in Saudi Arabia, but the stir that the rare flakes then arouse testifies precisely their extreme rarity.
These winter Asian games will take place in the province of Tabouk, border of Jordan and bathed by the Red Sea. She faces the Strait of Tiran, who separates her from the Egyptian city of Charm El-Cheikh. The next COP27 on climate change will be held in the latter in November. The delegates who are pressing there will be able to discuss at leisure on this Saudi parable. It perfectly illustrates the systematic subordination of environmental issues to power and prestige imperatives.
A year ago, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia launched a “green initiative” to achieve carbon neutrality in 2060. It was a question of planting billions of trees, massive reduction in gas emissions to Greenhouse effect from 2030, and the quasi-welfare of the protected areas of the kingdom, including in the province of Tabouk. On September 24, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Saudi delegate reiterated his country’s commitment to the fight against global warming.
The lever of the ‘Money
These laudable objectives remain obviously compatible, according to Saudi logic, with the environmental affront that will constitute the preparation and the holding of the Asian winter games. Their organization meets it is true to a goal that has nothing to do with sport and even less with ecology. It is a question of promoting a project which is particularly close to the heart of the strong man of Riyadh, the crown prince Mohammed ben Salman, recently promoted Prime Minister: the creation ex nihilo in this province of Tabouk of a futuristic city, Neom.
Mohammed Ben Salman, whose reputation remains tainted by the assassination and dismemberment of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi, in fact tries to copy, with a few decades late, the most flashy city of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai. We can better say the anachronism of a project whose elements of language refer to the inimitable jargon of international strategy consulting firms.
That the Hubris of a Potentat leads him to embrace the prospect of winter games in the middle of the desert can, alas, conceive. On the other hand, it is deplorable that the lever of money leads the organizational committees of such events to be freed from any other consideration and to remain deaf and blind to awareness in societies of the ever higher cost of disturbances climatic, and what feeds them. These drifts are dead ends. It should be recognized as quickly as possible.