Sustainability is embedded at the heart of The Ocean Race and our ‘Racing with Purpose’ programme’s objective is to act as a catalyst to accelerate the restoration of ocean health.

As part of our mission, we have signed up to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework whose goals are for the global sports community to combat climate change by making commitments to minimise greenhouse gas emissions and inspire others to take effective action too.

For our global sporting event this means making commitments to effectively reduce, measure, and report our greenhouse gas emissions, and importantly, to include climate change impacts in our ocean health advocacy, science and learning programme.

Creating strategic partnerships with like-minded organisations, such as Premier Partner 11th Hour Racing, delivery partners and teams will help increase the scale of our efforts and positive impact.

We’re inspiring thousands of schoolchildren, in over 40 countries, through including the connection between ocean and climate in our curriculum-based Learning Programme. The set of fun and informative modules show how they can also join us on the journey to help restore the health of our oceans.

The Ocean Race will contribute to scientific understanding of ocean health and the effects of climate change by using our Race boats to collect valuable data on sea surface temperature and ocean acidification, particularly valuable from some of the remotest parts of our planet the race will travel through, during the next edition of the race.

At the recent Ocean Race Summit in Genoa, Italy, business leaders and politicians made significant commitments to address the use of plastic, which, if it becomes marine debris, is impacting ocean health. For our global audience, an interactive livestream service encouraged potential attendees to watch online rather than fly.

For this event we tracked greenhouse gas emissions for employee and speaker travel to the summit, mitigating unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions from air travel through carbon offsetting. We actively promoted a livestream service to further encourage people to attend the event virtually rather than travel to the venue.

In choosing carbon offset projects to support, we plan to have a diverse portfolio including renewable energy, carbon sequestration and of course, projects that have social benefits. All carbon offset projects will be independently verified. We are also looking for projects with  a natural affinity with our sport, our stakeholders and our race route, with some connection to the ocean and coastal communities. Through this we hope to inspire our partners and guests to join us in neutralising their unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions while supporting projects and communities that matter to them.

Our greenhouse gas emissions strategy aligns with the UNFCCC Sports for Climate Action framework. The greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory for the 2017-18 Race has been measured and analysed. This is now informing our future reductions focus and understanding of our carbon emissions impacts.

Over the course of the next few years, a broad range of initiatives will further reduce the impact of our global sporting event starting from Alicante, Spain in autumn 2022.