QOC secretary-general Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani (L), IOC president Jacques Rogge (2L), president of Hungary and chairman of the IOC Commission for Sport and Environment Pal Schmitt (2R) and Wilfried Lemke (R), special adviser on Sport for Development and Peace to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon are seen during a press conference of the 9th World Conference on Sport and the Environment. The three-day conference concluded yesterday, framing an agenda for action in three focus areas – economic, social and environment. PICTURES: Noushad Thekkayil
Sports Reporter/Doha

Qatar is promoting concepts of sustainability, adopting unique initiative that could be a living example worth being followed worldwide in tackling environmental challenges, according to secretary general of Qatar Olympic Committee Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.
He was speaking at a plenary session of the 9th World Conference on Sport and the Environment yesterday under the topic ‘QOC Code for Green Sport Venues: A Local Standard Worthy of Global Sharing.’
“We share with the IOC the belief that sport, in its wider sense, based on the concepts of sustainability, can contribute effectively in changing where we live in all respects. This can be verified in the human, urban and environmental levels,” he said, pointing to a number of environmental challenges – scarcity of water from natural sources, rise in energy consumption – facing the Arab countries of the Gulf region in the wake of high pace of urban and industrial activities.
”These challenges can be dealt with and their impact reduced through promoting sustainable construction practices,” said the QOC secretary general, explaining how Qatar, under National Vision 2030, had strived for several years to develop human knowledge in the domain of sustainability assessment in sports facilities.
“We managed to achieve that, through serious research, and continuous efforts exerted by our research centers,” he said, referring to works carried out by the Gulf Organization for Research and Development.
The organisation’s technical teams, upon studying around 40 best practices in sustainability from around the world, developed the reference ‘The Qatar Code for Sustainability Assessment’, known for short as (QSAS).
Considered as the first of its kind in the world, the QSAS system is based on objective performance criteria of all types of buildings – it is used in Qatar for the sports facilities assessment system.
Sheikh Saoud further pointed out many of the facilities, designed according to ‘green’ building standards, are not operated in accordance with the objectives which they were built for.
“We were also keen to make the system work with various types of buildings and sports facilities, whether open or closed facilities, or those including both types,” he added. “This is aimed at achieving a maximum flexibility in the design of those buildings, in their construction, and in operating them.”
While the system in its current form has been designed based on the specific needs of this geographical area of the world, he claimed “it is quite flexible to be implemented outside this geographical scope, after making the necessary changes to adapt it to specificity of every geographical and environmental context.”
“The QOC are happy to provide the international sports community with the fruit of this modest effort, which hopefully could be, in a near future, one of the references in the domain of building sustainable sports facilities,” he concluded.