Held in Ulaanbaatar and organised by United World Wrestling, the Global Women in Wrestling Forum 2025 was about deepening our understanding of the sport and celebrating the impact of women within it. The event was global in every sense with athletes, officials, administrators and federation leaders from across the globe in attendance.
When I was accepted as a delegate for last year’s Women in Wrestling Global forum I was over the moon. I’d seen the camaraderie between women who had attended previous events and was so excited to be able to take part this time. So when I was asked to facilitate a short workshop on sustainability at the forum, my excitement hit another level. Sustainability is gaining importance in the sports world so to have the opportunity to discuss this topic with my peers felt like a gift.
I knew from the outset that if I really wanted to engage my peers, the topic needed to simplified. Not diluted. Simplified.
Sustainability, to most, sounds intimidating – daunting terminology, complex calculations and political positioning. For many federations, already navigating changes in the sport relating to their knowledge, sustainability potentially feels out of reach. My goal was not to overwhelm with theory but to ground with the bare basics of governance. In my experience, whenever a topic feels too difficult, people tend to disengage.
My initial bright idea was to encourage delegates to create a visual policy using a scrapbook-esque approach. The intention was to introduce the concepts of policy planning using visual prompts and collaborative design. However, without the right materials and time, that activity risked becoming superficial and ineffective. So I scrapped it (no pun intended).
I settled on an approach that began with a short engagement activity before talking about how sports organisations can align their policies with the UN SDGs as a way to compound impact and give the International Federation an easier way to track collective progress. I then shared the building blocks of a credible sustainable policy and presented a scenario. Delegates were given a fictional federation context and asked to build a basic policy including benchmarks, targets and alignment with the SDGs.
As the groups worked through the scenario, I could sense that they were discussing their options with confidence and not uncertainty. It was at this point that I was grateful that I had pivoted. There is a parallel between women’s wrestling and sustainability. The Women in Wrestling forum acknowledged the history and impact of women in wrestling – a history shaped by a commitment to the vision and strategic progress before structural support existed. Before the mandates, initiatives like the Women in Wrestling Forum built credibility and pathways over time.
Sustainability in sport is at an inflection point that gender diversity in sport was a few years ago. In many regions, a sustainability action plan is not required, however, the need to demonstrate a meaningful commitment to minimising environmental impact feels imminent. As with gender equality, those who engage early will help to inform how those requirements evolve and also help the late majority and laggards to navigate the landscape.
My key takeaway from Ulaanbaatar (and reminder to my peers in the environmental and sustainability space) is that the key to gaining buy in is to remove complexity. When we do that, we create confidence which is often the first step to meaningful change.