Background
Sochi Olympic Games took place in Russia in the year 2014. It was one of the greatest challenges the Russian government faced right from construction at the site to the expenditure on the actual event (Strohle, 2009). Apart from overspending which was doubling the cost of the previous Olympic events, the construction itself came under serious criticism because the Sochi area is a place that was preserved by UNESCO as a reserve for tourist attraction as well as a game reserve.
Despite the protests by human rights activists and the concerns raised by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the government went ahead with its plans to construct the field which was intended to carry as more as 88 participating countries, the world’s media, and other officials who were to take part in the event. This means that there was a huge piece of land that was required to be used (Brooksbank, 2011). Now, if this piece of land was meant for reserve for wildlife and as a tourist attraction, then there was the greatest effect on the wildlife that it hosted. However, the Russian government had promised that there would be the effective handling of this issue to give respect to green technology. This was supposed to ensure that the environmental impact of the whole event is adequately reduced.
The Sochi Olympics was held in 2014, a bid that was granted to Russia. It had to be based on a number of factors like finances, general environmental impact, and the impact it had on people leaving in that area. The construction was done on a 400-acre piece of land, which means, during construction, some people had to be displaced to leave space for the construction.
The Government had promised to ensure that the construction would be environmental friendly from the instance that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was also given a task of carrying out research to evaluate the impact of the construction. The UNEP was also supposed to offer interim sustainability report. This was to cover the whole environmental effect and to invent a strategy that would ensure that the event does not result to be hazardous to nature (Dobni, Dobni, & Luffman, 2001). As have been stated in the article, the Sochi area act as a route where animals like wild bear follow as they migrate in search of pasture and water. Some of the impacts that are likely to be felt during the construction on the site include interference with the natural inhabitant, general damage to the geographical environment, such as extensive excavations intended to level the ground. With such excavations, damping site becomes a challenge because the huge earth would be removed during construction and these need to be deposited as wastes somewhere.
Literature Review
Additionally, since a bunch of activities was to take place in this area, it was necessary that there was a damping site for wastes. Huge waste materials were seen arising from the huge number attendants in Sochi (Lambourne & Tomporowski, 2010).
Displacement of people and animals is another issue of concern. The construction was adversely seen as a way displacing people from their homes. Although there was compensation to those who were to be displaced, this compensation could not take place immediately and still the affected families had to wait as they are given temporary accommodation (Andrews & Russell, 2012). The most felt effect of this move was the damage to the biodiversity, for instance, most parts of the heritage site were overhauled and cleared rendering them unfit for wild animals and thus offer no attraction to tourists. It is important to note that tourist attraction sites in any nation are treated as an income generating for the country. Any interference with such sites is deemed as a threat to the national income generating agency and should be highly guarded.
However, some of these negative occurrences could be avoided if the stakeholders were true to their work. According to the advice on the progress and the feasibility studies done by the UNEP, if it were not for the greed of the stakeholders, the environmental impacts that almost throw all the good harvested from this event into a dustbin, there could be positive returns from this event that could go into history (Desa, and Basu, 2013). The stakeholders are depicted as selfish and corrupt and this made it hard to build standard structures to take care of the environmental consequences putting the environment at a risk and jeopardizing all the good things that came because of the event. Further, there was poor planning from the stakeholders such that there was not adequate time to apportion each activity enough time for completion. Everything was hurried up to compete with the available time (Panagiotakopoulos, 2012). Thus, some of the activities were not exhaustively done or they were not up to the standard. The cartels made it extremely difficult for the event to be hosted in an environment, which was properly done. The Sochi area was treated as the most diverse in terms of wildlife, which are major tourist attractions. Therefore, any damage to it will automatically lower the number of tourists getting into the country and consequently reduce the income.
Reasons for Success or Failure
A research on the comparison of the various Olympic games indicates that the London Olympic games of 2012 consumed 15 billion USD, 4.6 billion USD for Rio 2016, 40 billion USD for Beijing 2008, and 51 billion USD for Sochi 2014. From this analysis, it is shown that the Sochi Olympic games had the highest expenditure compared to the rest. This cost was this much due to several factors, some among them is corruption and misuse of funds. This could have started right from the time tenders were awarded and at the actual construction. The organizers ended up spending a huge amount on the project.
Conclusion
The experts report that there is an additional danger of increasing landfalls, mudflows, and houses coming down due to poor damping procedures. However, the researchers and environmentalists agree that there is always a great challenge when it comes to hosting winter games than summer games. It is therefore important to note that Sochi games would not have taken place at that time due to the environmental problems it caused. Despite all these, it is believed that there was adequate advice on the consequences of hosting such games in that area, but some of the information was ignored by the organizers. The IOC and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) collaborated with the organizers to ensure that the environmental effects were reduced during construction and the actual event, unfortunately, the stakeholders ignored some information (Bharathi, 2016). Some of the advisors really wanted that the issues concerning the environment were to be accorded highest priority during the planning and the execution of the actual event. Indeed, this could put into consideration all the aspects of the environment.
References
Andrews & Russell. (2012). Environmental impacts: strategy, evaluation and
Impact. Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, 2(1), pp.33-44.
Bharathi, A. (2016). Construction management. Higher Learning Research on Management, 6(4).
Brooksbank, R. (2011). Managing Sports Events. Management
Intelligence & Planning, 12(4), 10-14. https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02634509410060695
Dobni, B., Dobni, D., & Luffman, G. (2001). Behavioral approaches to
Environmental Management. Learning Intelligence & Planning, 19(6), 400-408. https://dx.doi.or/10.1108/02634500110405405
Desa, G. and Basu, S. (2013). International standards and environmental effects. Strategic
Environmental Journal, 7(1), pp.26-49.
Panagiotakopoulos, A. (2012). Development new ideas and skills in Greek sporting
activities. Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, 2(2), pp.141-150
Lambourne & Tomporowski. (2010). The effect of environmental degradation on human and animal life: A meta-regression analysis. Brain Res., 1314, 12–24.
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