Snakes and Ladders of Sustainable Development Through Sport in Iran

The purpose of this paper was to survey the snakes and ladders of achieving sustainable development goals (UN 2030 Agenda) through sport. In the snake and ladders metaphor, ladders imply to the factors that accelerate the progress toward the goals whereas snakes consider as the deterrent factors. The present research method was qualitative and based on the Grounded theory. In reviewing 97 papers with two keywords of “development” and “sport” in 30 journals approved with the ministry of science, and interviews with 13 experts from the Ministry of Sport, the National Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the Sports Medicine Research Center and academics experts that selected by judgmental sampling method; 72 independent initial codes identified and based on the conceptual and semantic relationships between the codes, 20 key concepts in the 12 categories were identified as snakes. These barriers have been addressed in the framework of six goals of the 2030 Agenda that sport has a direct role to achieving them. Also, 26 ladders or accelerators were identified within these six goals and 26 initial codes were grouping into 14 concepts and 9 categories. In general, sport is more likely faces with snakes at the macro level (such as poor integration of policies or insufficient infrastructure), although rules and regulations, in some cases, were the ladders, but most of the ladders can be found at the individual level (individual motivation) and at the community level (civil society).