NZ footballer leads fight against Fifa’s fossil fuels

When Katie Rood first travelled overseas to play football, she was excited to see what nature looked like outside New Zealand.
“I thought everywhere was going to be a paradise like New Zealand. I quite quickly realised that, as humans, we’ve had a pretty heavy impact on the globe. That lack of access to nature in certain places struck me,” the former Football Fern recalls.
Now, Rood finds herself in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the COP29 climate summit has brought more than 60,000 diplomats, journalists, activists, lobbyists and business executives to talk sustainability – and maybe do a bit of greenwashing.
Among those in (brief) attendance was Fifa President Gianni Infantino, who flew in by private jet for the leader’s summit last week before jetting off again. While in town, the boss of the world’s largest sporting organisation talked a big game about climate change and renewed an agreement with the Pacific Islands Forum.
That’s exactly why Rood has come (via commercial plane) all the way to COP29. Last month, she and two other footballers spearheaded an open letter to Infantino calling on him to nix Fifa’s partnership deal with Saudi Aramco. More than 130 women players from 26 countries have signed on since.
“It is the biggest oil and gas organisation in the world. It is also the biggest greenhouse gas emitter of any company, ever. It’s also owned by the Saudi state which has committed human rights abuses, especially towards women,” Rood says.
“It really doesn’t align with the culture and the values of football. And Fifa’s own values, in terms of sustainability and environment and human rights. We as females and footballers wanted to raise our voices and say this isn’t the direction they should be going in.”
Fifa has responded to journalists’ enquiries about the letter but hasn’t yet directly replied to the footballers. Rood says she has no plans to back down if the partnership isn’t scrapped.
“Before the 2023 World Cup, there was talks of Visit Saudi becoming a key sponsor. The players stood up and said, ‘That’s not us. That’s not what we want.’ I imagine that the players aren’t going to just back down and let this be the case,” she says.
“If you look at the history of women’s football in particular, women were banned from playing for so long. The fact that we are even playing now is off the backs of so many great people just fighting relentlessly to get us this platform on the pitch. We take that responsibility seriously – so many people have endured so much for us to have this platform that we’re not just going to waste the opportunity.”
The letter outlines Saudi Arabia’s long and ongoing history of abuse of women and the rainbow community, alongside Saudi Aramco’s chequered environmental record.
“This is a regime that in January 2023 sentenced a Leeds (UK) PhD student, dental hygienist and a mother of two Salma al-Shehab to 27 years in prison followed by a 27-year travel ban for retweeting in favour of free speech. It’s a regime that only allowed women to drive in 2018, and even then locked up the women who had campaigned for that progress to take place, subjecting them to sexual harassment and torture during interrogation,” the letter states.
“Saudi authorities have been spending billions in sports sponsorship to try to distract from theregime’s brutal human rights reputation, but its treatment of women speaks for itself.”
If polluters and human rights abusers like the Saudi regime can use sport to greenwash and whitewash their records, Rood sees an opportunity to fight back through the same medium. She says sports have immense cultural power and can help bridge the gap between everyday people and complex issues like climate change.
“That’s what excites me most about New Zealand. Sport is so engrained in our culture. It’s such a big part of who we are and how we view ourselves. We’re such proud people around sport and we revere athletes and sports teams,” she says.
“Plus, we’re so connected to the natural world in New Zealand. We’ve got access to it that a lot of others don’t have. I’d love to see more athletes stepping up and saying, ‘Hey whānau, let’s look after what we’ve got and let’s restore what we can.’ People are looking for leadership and people look to athletes and listen to what they say.”
Yesterday’s report about a deal on climate finance at the G20 may have been a bit premature. The communique from the world’s most powerful countries landed overnight in Baku with just a sentence or two on climate finance, encouraging a deal at COP29. That countries want a deal is no surprise, however.
Notwithstanding UN climate chief Simon Stiell’s attempt to beat it up into a big win – “This is an essential signal, in a world plagued by debt crises and spiraling climate impacts, wrecking lives, slamming supply chains and fanning inflation in every economy,” he said in a statement – the message is clear. No one is coming to the rescue. Whether COP29 succeeds or fails is up to the ministers and negotiators in Baku.
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, in delivering New Zealand’s national statement to the COP on Tuesday, announced a $10 million contribution to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. The global fund was set up last COP to compensate developing countries for the economic impacts of climate-fuelled weather events.
The contribution comes on top of a previously announced $20 million commitment to loss and damage outside the context of the global fund. It is from this pot of money that New Zealand will sign a deal with Vanuatu later this week, to help the island nation fundraise to meet its estimated US$177 million loss and damage needs over the next decade.
One staple of the COP climate summits is the flurry of alliances, pledges, commitments, dialogues and other arrangements that countries launch and enter into with one another. On Tuesday, New Zealand signed up to two such agreements.
First, we joined the COP29 presidency’s ‘Baku Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmers’, which aims to map the current state of research into agricultural emissions to avoid duplication. As the founder of the 2009 Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, New Zealand will be keen to ensure the flurry of new initiatives that have come since aren’t retreading our steps.
Second, New Zealand joined the Dutch-led Coalition on Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Incentives Including Subsidies. This is bread and butter stuff for New Zealand, which has long advocated against fossil fuel subsidies. Our entry, which came alongside that of the UK and Colombia, brings the total coalition membership to 16. It will, however, raise questions if Resources Minister Shane Jones goes ahead with his plans to incentivise new gas development in New Zealand.