An overview of Sustainable Development Goal 9

In outlining sport's contribution to all 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), the UN posits that sport can be mobilized in pursuit of sustainable development including, for example, affordable and clean energy, climate action, and sustainable infrastructure and industrialization. While sports' contribution to environmental sustainability has received growing attention, the latter of these trends-sustainable infrastructure and industrialization, as encapsulated in Sustainable Development Goal 9-has largely escaped attention. This chapter seeks to give greater attention to the relationship between sport for development and peace and SDG 9 by first contextualizing sport's contribution to sustainable infrastructure and industrialization across three themes: development as modernization, ecological modernization, and modernity in a "New Climatic Regime." The chapter then explores how the UN, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the International Olympic Committee have mobilized sport in pursuit of sustainable infrastructure and industrialization. The chapter concludes by arguing that innovation in SDP can be deployed and informed by climate science and sport and recreation approaches, but to do so requires foregrounding the mutual dependence between human and non-human actors and communities.