Mobility of Sustainability Policy: Sledding Tracks in the Nagano and PyeongChang Olympics

Abstract

To examine the mobilization of environmental sustainability policies in the Winter Olympic Games in Asia guided by approaches that highlight policy mobilities. The construction of sledding tracks in two cases, the Winter Games in Japan and South Korea, was analyzed to demonstrate how sustainability was framed and which policy programs were implemented.

The first part of the chapter introduces Olympic mega-events as agents of sustainability policy circulation. It discusses the study's key concepts and describes approaches to policy circulation studies. The second part of the chapter outlines the construction of the Nagano and PyeongChang sledding tracks and the sustainability policies that were in use during that time. The third part discusses the two cases from a policy mobility perspective.

The two sledding track cases are described, along with national and Olympic policies of environmental sustainability. Discursive policy framings of environmental sustainability in Nagano and PyeongChang similarly modeled previous Games' best practices that were supported by scientific and technological knowledge. It was clear, however, that best practices were taken up differently in each construction effort, and that the lack of cooperation between Games organizers across these venues and countries meant that environmental expertise was not always transferred from one Games to another. Policy circulation was also affected by entangled transnational power relations, and by the fact that each nation state and the corporate actors who built the sledding tracks arguably had uneven power relations with international expert agencies. Thus, policy priorities and policy mobility from one Olympics to the next were determined by a combination of the interaction with these expert networks, time pressure in the Olympic structure, and rivalry between the countries.

Implications for enhancing policy mobility and deliberation of policy commitments are discussed.

Citation

Kim, K.-y. (2020), "Mobility of Sustainability Policy: Sledding Tracks in the Nagano and PyeongChang Olympics", Wilson, B. and Millington, B. (Ed.) Sport and the Environment (Research in the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 13), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 137-155. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1476-285420200000013009