FIFA urged to get ball rolling on eco commitments

Ecology campaigners in Brazil are asking FIFA to live up to its environmental commitments after it pledged a greener World Cup through its ‘Football for the Planet’ programme.

In a recent article in Biotropica, researchers have challenged FIFA and the Brazilian government to protect 1,000 hectares of the critically endangered Caatinga ecosystem – the natural habitat for its World Cup mascot, Fuelco, the armadillo - for each goal scored in the World Cup.

“Protecting the remaining Caatinga is extremely urgent. We want the choice of one of the Caatinga’s most iconic species as the World Cup mascot to be more than just a symbolic one”, said José Alves Siqueira, one of the paper’s authors and a Professor at the Federal University of the Valley of São Francisco.

For the 2014 FWC in Brazil, FIFA adopted the endemic Brazilian Three-banded armadillo, an endangered species, as its mascot. They named it Fuleco by combining the Portuguese words for football (“futbol”) and ecology (“ecologia”). The armadillo, when threatened, will protect itself by rolling up into a ball.

“The Caatinga is a uniquely Brazilian ecosystem. By acting boldly and swiftly, FIFA and the Brazilian government could help save the Brazilian Three-banded armadillo and protect thousands of hectares of its habitat”, added Enrico Bernard, another author also based at the Federal University of Pernambuco. “That would be the best goal scored this World Cup.”