Green: Qatar 2022

Congratulations to Qatar! They have achieved what a few people thought would be possible: a country from the Middle East, which sits right in the very hot desert could be awarded one of the most prestigious and coveted prices in sports - to host the World Cup. World Cup bid organizers and officials, have proven to the whole world that - the World Cup is truly and indeed a World event. If they had decided against Qatar's bid, mainly because of the heat here: then, how can the event be called a World Cup?

Qatar: has over the years aimed at and undertaken seemingly impossible tasks and got them done. It is the country that brought two of soccer's greatest players of all time, together; two players, two adversaries - who through the years have publicly loathed and despised each other. Pele and Maradona. All previous attempts to get the two together, had failed.  But Qatar did bring them together, not only in one room, in Doha - but, they even embraced each other. It is is the country that when launching the all news Al Jazeera News in Arabic, way back in 1996, many scoffed and laughed at the idea of an only all news Arabic channel; that channel has since become a Network of many channels, international and all dominant.

Qatar: a nation that only since 1971 became an independent, sovereign state; so small, with such a small population; so obscure just a few years ago - did it. Many opposed Qatar's World Cup hosting bid; especially due to the heat that will be there in Doha during the middle of the year, when the tournament will be held; and for some reasons, some opposed its plan to build an Eco-friendly site for the event. It did it; it won the bid against many apparently insurmountable odds. It will be the first country in the Middle East to stage the event; just as it was the first country in the region to stage the Asian Football Cup in 1988 and will again host it in January next year; it was too, the first country in the region to host the 15th Asian Games in 2006. All these events were successfully hosted and praised; Doha’s staging of the 2006 Asian Games, was hailed as the best ever Games since its inception in 1951.

Qatar: won the approval of World Cup officials by putting together a bid for the 2022 World Cup that includes several new stadiums and extensions to existing stadiums with an Eco-friendly flair. Central to their bid, was a revolutionary cooling system that would use solar power to provide zero-carbon air conditioning to cool the stadiums, advanced state-of-the technology, that if proven to work - has the potential to transform the lives of tens of millions living near the equator.

In addition to the stadiums, the proposal includes a complete upgrade to the infrastructure and improvements in local metro and bus lines and an increased use of water taxis. The stadiums will be state-of-the-art and will feature two solar energy systems that will work together to ensure a carbon-neutral comfortable environment for all teams, media and spectators. The first of these technologies is a photovoltaic system, which will use a photovoltaic array to convert the sun’s rays into electricity.....Read on.

Note: after the 2022 World Cup tournament, Qatar has promised to dismantle the modular stadiums and rebuild them in twenty, poor, third world countries who can't afford their own. The stadiums components are flexible in such a way and variety, that they can be disassembled, moved and reconstructed differently. That is truly sustainable, Green thinking.

*Read: about the Project here, here and here

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