World Sailing, the global governing body for the sport, has announced that it has been awarded with a coveted sustainability standard.

The international certificate, called ISO 20121, details the strict requirements an event has to meet to ensure sustainability. It covers all parts of event management, from caterers and lighting to stage building and participating teams.

The news means that it becomes the first international sports federation to be awarded with the important standard.

The body, which represents 144 member countries, announced the news yesterday on Twitter.

Dan Reading, World Sailing's Sustainability Programme Manager commented: "We wanted to receive third party certification to assure our stakeholders that we have a robust system in place. The whole process is based on continual improvement and World Sailing will be independently assessed by the British Standards Institute every six months to ensure that improvements are made”

The standard forms part of World Sailing’s ambitious Sustainability Agenda 2030, which it launched in November last year. The strategy includes plans to abolish single use plastics during its events by 2020 and reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent over the next six years.

The Agenda is linked to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which sees sport as a “key enabler” to meeting the goals. World Sailing is also looking at gender equality in the sport, improving training and creating a framework to measure waste at all its events. The body has enlisted help from corporate partners Volvo, Rolex and SAP to meet its ambitious programme.

"Part of the process is to involve stakeholders in the creation of targets and we are still collecting feedback for our ambitious strategy which we will deliver over the next twelve years through our Sustainability Agenda 2030 consultation", Reading added.

Image Credit: World Sailing/Sailing Energy