Bellewstown man is Bohemians soccer club's first Climate Justice Officer

A Bellewstown man who became the world football’s first Climate Justice Officer says the potential for transformation using sport is "enormous."

Sean McCabe was appointed the newly created voluntary role with Bohemian Football Club and the first position of its kind in world football in 2021.

Sean has worked internationally with voluntary and climate justice organisations including the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice. During this time he engaged in negotiations for the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals as well as working with the members of the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council. In 2020 he ran as a Green Party candidate for the general election.

He also spent time in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, to work with communities living in acutely vulnerable situations.

"It grew out of a project I was doing at the time looking at how communities around Ireland could tangibly benefit from climate action, to flip the whole climate story on its head."

"In the past it was all about what individuals have to do to change their own behaviour and to reduce their own carbon footprint. A lot of that is quite harmful because many people can't afford the steps that are necessary to reduce their carbon footprint. That idea in individualising people in the crisis is quite hard, people get less behind it very quickly. When you flip it on its head and say how can we collectively work together to tackle the climate crisis and share in the prosperity that could come in terms of new business and new jobs. How could it be done in a way that we could build our community wealth?

Sean is well equipped for this role having been previously executive manager of the TASC Climate Justice Centre.

"At the end of that piece of work the people's transition report pointed to a model called community wealth building as an enabler of climate action that would be good for people as well.

"We currently have three projects on the go, one is the story and the culture of collective community based climate action and that's funded by Creative Ireland. In March we will be launching a walk way through Dublin from where the club was founded to Dalymount Park to where the club is today and that walk will take people on a trip through Bohs history but it will also talk about future transition and what people learn from the past in order to inform what we do in the future. It looks at food, transportation, housing the key issues within the climate space.

"Then we have a very significant European project that we are leading with very large organsations like La Liga that's looking at how football clubs can make climate action good for their fans and how can they include fans in the transition.

"The third project is about making those changes, we are setting up a cooperative under Bohemians. Bohemians is a cooperative, it has been member owned since 1890. What we want to do is build another cooperative under the club that would allow our fans our community to benefit from climate action.

The activist says we all need to take action and realise the potential disastrous ramifications of climate change.

"It's the single greatest issue that we face, he said. "It has the potential to really do incredible harm to our society. Scientists are pointing towards severe impact as early as the middle of the next decade. This links in with the ability to feed ourselves, if you don't know when to plant and when to harvest because the seasons fundamentally change then you face famine and starvation.

"From my perspective you cannot solve this crisis without solving the other crisis around poverty and inequality because everyone has to be able to take part in the transformation or else it won't work."