Go Green or Go Home by Cassie Marion

Being the worlds best is what it’s all about. The Winter Olympics are always getting bigger, better, more entertaining, more dramatic, more cultural, and continue to push the human body to its limit, all for the precious gold metal. The 2014 Winter games are set to be hosted by Sochi, located in Russia’s Krasnodar Region between the Black Sea and snow-capped Caucasus Mountains.

Sochi residents as well as government and environmental groups protested against the construction, set to begin in July 2009, in an attempt to preserve Sochi’s Caucasus Nature Reserve. In response to construction, the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC) said, “This is a very significant development because it removes the danger of building an ecologically dangerous unit on the Black Sea coast, which threatened the ecosystems of Black sea, ecological prosperity and the recreational resources of Sochi,”. Due to the concern of residents, UNEP has involved themselves to make the Winter Olympics of 2014 as green, clean and Sochi friendly as possible.

The main goal for these Olympic games is to be as “green” as possible. The city of Sochi is planning to invest $1.7 billion towards renewable energy and energy conservation (Stallone, June 15, 2009). “We developed the Sochi 2014 environmental strategy and this will ensure that the ecological situation in the Krasnodar Region is enhanced for generations to come,” said the President and CEO of Sochi Winter Olympics 2014, Dmitry Chernyshenko (Stallone, June 15, 2009). Doing everything they can to keep their city clean, Sochi already has plans to make room for many new facilities including one plan to move the bobsled and luge tracks to help preserve the Caucasus nature reserve from the fans, athletes, coaches and tourists who will soon be on their way to Sochi for the 2014 Olympics. The agreement to be as green as possible was marked with the planting of trees, showing the support for Russia’s United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) billion trees campaign. Helping to improve the environment, the Sochi Olympics are expected to be greener than ever before.

Not only is the competition going to be intense in the games, but in construction for green, environmentally safe facilities as well.