SUSTAINABLE SLOPES MAKES DOPES OF ‘GREEN’ SKIERS

The Sustainable Slopes Program (SSP) began auspiciously. Launched in 2000, the SSP was developed as the environmental program of the ski industry by the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA), a trade group, using broad input from ski companies, government agencies, environmental nonprofits and other stakeholders.

The SSP’s purpose is to promote “beyond compliance” principles of environmental management in 21 areas, organized around the categories of Water Resources, Energy Conservation & Use and Waste Management. SSP participants, whose numbers have grown from 160 to 175 over the past four years, are expected to implement annual self-assessments. Like many of the more than 200 voluntary corporate environmental programs instituted since the early 1990s, the SSP lacks specific performance-based standards, third-party oversight and penalties for failed compliance. In other words, it allows ski areas to unsparingly sanction their own sustainability.

None of the major environmental groups that originally supplied comments to aid the SSP’s design – among them the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council – have chosen to become partners of the program. Jeff Berman, executive director of the nonprofit Colorado Wild, told the Associated Press, “More resorts are using (the SSP) for greenwashing than as a genuine tool.” Dissatisfied voices within the ski industry itself have also emerged. “When this program came out, we said, ‘Let’s at least give this the benefit of the doubt,’” said Auden Schendler of the Aspen Skiing Company. “Five years down the line, not much has happened.”

In August, the Policy Studies Journal published Jorge Rivera and Peter de Leon’s Is Greener Whiter? Voluntary Environmental Performance of Western Ski Areas, a study which scientifically validated concerns that the current state of the SSP falls short of its environmental mission. Comparing the environmental performance of SSP participants with non-participants in 109 ski areas stretching from Arizona to Alaska, the study concluded that participants actually fare worse environmentally than non-SSP ski areas. The results are disappointing, both for ski companies that fear bad press and environmentally conscious skiers who have been duped by industry greenwash.

As pure as snow?

Ski areas create pretty panoramas of green, white and blue; forest, snow and sky. But adjusting the lens brings into focus a host of environmental problems, such as deforestation, polluted runoff, energy consumption for lifts and buildings and water consumption for snowmaking.

Each year, the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition (SACC) captures a picture of those problems with its Ski Areas Environmental Scorecard. The SACC grades western ski areas individually on a variety of criteria, including: avoiding development on undisturbed lands; preventing destruction of wetlands and old growth forests; reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution; and conserving water and energy. According to the SACC, “the destruction of undisturbed forests is the single most damaging ecological impact a ski area can undertake.

On average, ski areas scored less than 60% credit on the Environmental Scorecard, good for an overall C grade for the industry. The grades provided necessary independent environmental data for Is Greener Whiter? In 2004, just 62, or 35%, of SSP participants completed the self-assessment surveys that symbolize accountability within the program.

Public relations slalom

The ski industry issued a weak response to the report. Geraldine Link, the NSAA’s public policy director, was quoted in the Denver Post saying, “Regulations only help you avoid the worst, and a voluntary program like this can only bring out the best in terms of compliance.” Problem is, unlike regulation, the SSP has no fixed standards to comply with.

Link continued to catalogue the industry’s unconvincing environmental credentials, noting that 25 program participants purchase ‘green’ power for their operations “because it’s the right thing to do.” It is, of course, the right thing to do for the well-being of the world, but perhaps more fimportantly for the ski industry, buying renewable energy boosts its long-term bottom line. As the SACC explains, “The ski industry will be one of, if not the first industry to be impacted by the effects of increased global temperatures.” A study released last December by the United Nations Environmental Programme issued a dire warning to the world’s ski areas that global warming will raise snow lines and reduce snowfall. To compensate, American ski resorts may need to produce nearly three times as much artifical now by 2070. Scientist Mike Dettinger of the United States Geological Survey has estimated that snow lines in California may climb between 3280 and 4920 meters this century.

Ticket to lift public goods

Whether selfless or selfish, the ski industry’s concern for the climate does protect the public. Yet, at the same time, the industry makes a habit of infringing on public property. More than 90 percent of western ski areas operate on federal lands, leading to commercial consumption of America’s communal resources. In White River National Forest, home to famous resorts such as Aspen, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain and Vail, skier numbers have grown by 28 percent since 1985, while ski acreage has more than doubled over the same period.

In addition to its major conclusion about the environmental inferiority of SSP participants, Is Greener Whiter? found that ski areas located on federal lands performed worse environmentally than those that aren’t. The result is surprising given the legal requirements of private operations on public property, but makes sense in light of the government’s inclination to help not hinder ski area development. In 1986, Congress passed the National Forest Ski Permit Act requiring the Forest Service to actively promote ski areas. Recently, through the National Sports Winter Partnership, the Forest Service has begun providing funding to advertise ski sports. These federal policies create clear enticements for local officials to favor development, since most of the leasing fees that ski companies pay to the Forest Service are kept by the local offices that collect them. The Forest Service happens to be one of several official government partners of the SSP. In the words of Rivera and Leon, the report’s authors, “support of the SSP by federal agencies reinforces a weak institutional context in which opportunistic ski areas may be expecting to preempt more stringent regulatory oversight.”

Ski rescue

One caveat that Rivera and Leon took care to mention is that the conclusions of their analysis do not imply causality. That is, while SSP participants may have worse environmental records than other ski areas, their irresponsibility is not necessarily a result of taking part in the SSP. Instead, many of the participants may be large ski areas with resource-intensive operations, and for reasons regarding their prominence they may use the SSP opportunistically to receive positive publicity. Nonetheless, it is certainly implicit that by choosing to join the SSP, which involves endorsing the NSAA’s environmental charter, ski areas pledge to hold themselves to higher environmental standards than they would otherwise. Clearly, that is not happening.

The recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the Sustainable Slopes Program are the same as for other hollow corporate environmental policies. First, establish performance-based standards to provide participants with specific targets to meet. Second, employ independent, third-party monitoring of compliance to ensure that participants are as green as they claim to be. Third, don’t simply dangle the carrot of an enhanced environmental reputation to get participants moving towards compliance, but, when necessary, use the stick of sanctions for noncompliance. Ideally, too, all information about the program will be transparent and publicly available.

For now, the ski industry is not green. It is hardly even white. Sustainability in more than name is drowning beneath dirty runoff, burning because of fossil fuel consumption, and being battered by falling old-growth trees. The National Ski Areas Association will first have to rescue the Sustainable Slopes Program in order to rescue the environment from the ski industry. For the 5th anniversary of SSP in 2005, the NSAA plans to revise its original environmental charter, creating a tremendous opportunity to implement necessary changes in the program.

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