Examples of placing environmental issues in the forefront of Development through Football initiatives date as far back as 1988, when Football for Hope partner MYSA (Mathare Youth Sports Association) from Kenya first included slum clean-up sessions as a fundamental part of its programmes.

Similarly, large-scale efforts are being made in the frame of FIFA's Green Goal programme, referring - among other cases - to the organization of a climate-neutral FIFA World Cup™ and the financial support of South African projects towards compensating large amounts of harmful gas emissions.

In this view, there is an obvious necessity to promote the integration of environmental concepts (such as air pollution, waste disposal/usage, energy consumption and others) into football for development projects in order to raise local awareness and tackle an ever-increasing problem. A strategy which applies to other thematic fields but is particularly useful also to football for environment projects, is to work consistently with the respective local communities as well as with relevant environmental agencies and organizations both in terms of awareness and implementation.

An advantage of such programmes is that complex environmental issues can be addressed easily since they can be based on examples from the everyday life of a local community and then linked to higher scales of impact and more generic approaches.