Katie Rood, in action for the Football Ferns: "I thought everywhere was going to be a paradise like New Zealand." Photo / Photosport
Katie Rood, in action for the Football Ferns: "I thought everywhere was going to be a paradise like New Zealand." Photo / Photosport
Marc Daalder for LockerRoom
When Katie Rood first travelled overseas to play football, she was excited to see what nature looked like outside New Zealand.
“I thought everywhere was going to be a paradise like New Zealand. I quite quickly realised that, as humans, we’ve had a pretty heavy impact on the globe. That lack of access to nature in certain places struck me,” the former Football Fern recalls.
This month, Rood found herself in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the COP29 climate summit brought more than 60,000 diplomats, journalists, activists, lobbyists and business executives to talk sustainability – and maybe do a bit of greenwashing.
Among those in (brief) attendance was Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who flew in by private jet for the leader’s summit last week before jetting off again. While in town, the boss of the world’s largest sporting organisation talked a big game about climate change and renewed an agreement with the Pacific Islands Forum.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino flew in by private jet to attend COP29. Photo / Photosport
That’s exactly why Rood went (via commercial plane) all the way to COP29. Last month, she and two other footballers spearheaded an open letter to Infantino calling on him to nix Fifa’s partnership deal with Saudi Aramco. More than 130 women players from 26 countries have signed on since.
“It is the biggest oil and gas organisation in the world. It is also the biggest greenhouse gas emitter of any company, ever. It’s also owned by the Saudi state which has committed human rights abuses, especially towards women,” Rood says.
“It really doesn’t align with the culture and the values of football. And Fifa’s own values, in terms of sustainability and environment and human rights. We as females and footballers wanted to raise our voices and say this isn’t the direction they should be going in.”
Fifa has responded to journalists’ inquiries about the letter but hasn’t yet directly replied to the footballers. Rood says she has no plans to back down if the partnership isn’t scrapped.
“Before the 2023 World Cup, there was talks of Visit Saudi becoming a key sponsor. The players stood up and said, ‘That’s not us. That’s not what we want.’ I imagine that the players aren’t going to just back down and let this be the case,” she says.
“If you look at the history of women’s football in particular, women were banned from playing for so long. The fact that we are even playing now is off the backs of so many great people just fighting relentlessly to get us this platform on the pitch. We take that responsibility seriously – so many people have endured so much for us to have this platform that we’re not just going to waste the opportunity.”
The letter outlines Saudi Arabia’s long and ongoing history of abuse of women and the rainbow community, alongside Saudi Aramco’s chequered environmental record.
“This is a regime that in January 2023 sentenced a Leeds (UK) PhD student, dental hygienist and a mother of two Salma al-Shehab to 27 years in prison followed by a 27-year travel ban for retweeting in favour of free speech. It’s a regime that only allowed women to drive in 2018, and even then locked up the women who had campaigned for that progress to take place, subjecting them to sexual harassment and torture during interrogation,” the letter states.
“Saudi authorities have been spending billions in sports sponsorship to try to distract from the regime’s brutal human rights reputation, but its treatment of women speaks for itself.”
If polluters and human rights abusers like the Saudi regime can use sport to greenwash and whitewash their records, Rood sees an opportunity to fight back through the same medium. She says sports have immense cultural power and can help bridge the gap between everyday people and complex issues like climate change.
“That’s what excites me most about New Zealand. Sport is so engrained in our culture. It’s such a big part of who we are and how we view ourselves. We’re such proud people around sport and we revere athletes and sports teams,” she says.
“Plus, we’re so connected to the natural world in New Zealand. We’ve got access to it that a lot of others don’t have. I’d love to see more athletes stepping up and saying, ‘Hey whānau, let’s look after what we’ve got and let’s restore what we can.’ People are looking for leadership and people look to athletes and listen to what they say.”
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.
