Football and climate change, where is the connection? Right here! Football is the biggest sport on the planet, climate change is our current most pressing problem. Can we utilise global interest in football to impact climate change in a positive way? The ‘Hidden Voices of Climate Change’ project wants to do just that.

Hidden Voices is part of the Net Zero Football Project led by the United Nations Academic Impact Hub for the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) SDG16 at De Montfort University which is supporting amateur football clubs to take climate action and reduce carbon emissions.

The project has already started to gain recognition around the world. Carlos Islam, who heads up the UN Football for the Goals initiative, has visited us, and we have been invited to showcase the project at COP28 in Dubai in November 2023.

Hidden Voices presents a unique avenue for youth living in different, often difficult contexts, to leverage their passion for football and community engagement to bring attention to the effects of climate change on their local environment and society.

Through this initiative, young people are empowered to voice their concerns and raise awareness about the critical issue of climate change, using the sense of togetherness and shared purpose fostered by football to galvanise their communities towards collective action.

Young people will be able to signal new or emerging initiatives that can help to tackle the impacts of climate change. The project will enable community participants to act as citizen scientists, contributing new data by publishing their stories and opinions on a project website which will serve as a repository of information in the global climate change debate.

The project offers the prospect of creating a global community of local football enthusiasts, academic institutions and environmental NGOs, all able to utilise their own experiences, environmental know-how, and love of the ‘beautiful game’ to help tackle the climate emergency facing planet earth.