Golf: A handicap for Asia's environment

Golf: A handicap for Asia's environment

Grace Nirang, Reuters, Jakarta

Golf was banned for a time some 600 years ago in Scotland, the land of its origin, because the game was deemed to be interfering with archery practice and thus a threat to national security.

These days many see the proliferation of golf courses across Asia as a threat to the region's beleaguered environment.

The sport is being blamed for exacerbating floods in Indonesia, plundering arable land in China and poisoning water supplies in Malaysia and Thailand.

Developers and golfers contend the beautifully landscaped courses create badly needed green lungs in Asia's overcrowded and pollution-choked cities, and say the sport is a scapegoat for social jealousy.

But the golf courses impact on the environment, depleting and polluting water, as well as contaminating the soil and air, the Global Antigolf Movement says on its Web site (www.verdinrete.it/oristano/antigolf.htm)

"This, in turn, leads to health problems for local communities, populations downstream and even golfers, caddies and people spraying chemicals on golf courses," it says.

Golf courses across Indonesia's most populous island of Java are blamed for contributing to the worst flooding in decades, which over the last few weeks, have killed at least 120 people, forced more than 400,000 to flee and turned much of the capital Jakarta into lakes and ponds for a time.

Environmentalists said chronic corruption in the world's fourth most populous country aggravated the situation, with licenses given to developers to build on hundreds of hectares (acres) of productive land, as well as swamps, lakes and forests.

"Most of the golf courses in Indonesia are developed following land use conversion. They always changed the natural contours when developing a golf course," said Longgena Ginting of leading environmental group Walhi.

Under sharp criticism for his poor performance in preventing floods, Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso said two 18-hole golf courses in northern Jakarta, both built by converting swamps and mangrove forests, would be converted into forest and a dam.

In Thailand, experts say upcountry courses compete with farmers for water from the government's irrigation system and sometimes use pesticides that get into the public water supply.

"Fights for water from the irrigation canals between small- scale farmers and resorts and golf courses have been a chronic problem," said Krisada Boonchaim, a coordinator at the Bangkok- based Project for Ecological Recovery.

Thai golf courses occasionally divert water from public reservoirs to their greens, despite poor farmers protests.

Golf's boom in Asia came in the late 1980s and continued through much of the 1990s in line with fast growth in the region's economy.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Golf Monthly put the number of golf courses in Asia outside Japan at more than 1,200 by 2000 from only 764 in 1990.

The golfing population had more than doubled to 3.8 million by 2000 from about 1.5 million golfers in 1990, it said.

In Malaysia alone the number of golf courses has swollen to 204 this year from just 72 in 1988.

Out of a population of 23 million people, Golf (Malaysia) Publications estimates that as of 2000, there were 196,000 male golfers, 15,000 females and 1,500 under 18s in a country with a fast growing urban middle class.

"Do you need 204 golf courses? Golf is not an ordinary person's sport. Golf is a game of the elite," said Gurmit Singh, Center for Environment Technology and Development executive director.

He ridiculed the idea golf brought environmental benefits.

"By cutting down a tropical ecosystem and replacing it by grass, you are doing nothing to help the environment."

In China, despite new laws and periodic bans over the past decade, bulldozers plunder arable farmland and protected wetlands to make way for fairways and bunkers surrounding cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Said Professor Yang Dongping, vice-director of the influential non-governmental organization Friends of Nature: "Environmental action lags as far behind policy as it ever has, and golf courses are no different."

But environmental activists have begun trading strokes with deep-pocketed developers, many from Hong Kong and Singapore, who have built dozens of courses that cater to a rising gentry class and swelling expatriate communities.

Controversy flared in Beijing last fall amid reports of five planned courses inside the city limits -- trumpeted as "green belts" by district and landscaping officials.

The projects would skirt a municipal ban relegating some 15 existing courses, a third practice sites, to Beijing's suburbs.

Critics and media say officials and developers are bent on profiting from efforts to beautify the pollution-choked capital ahead of the 2008 Olympics. The official Beijing Youth Daily has blasted proposed courses as "toxic waste dumps".

The city government, which also spearheads Olympic planning, hopes prohibitive land pricing will ward off the developers.

"The city government is sensitive to criticism," said reporter Shu Zhigang, who has written a series of articles on environmentally hazardous development around Beijing.

"But the market carries a force of its own."

Defenders, however, say there is more to golf than just profits for developers and fun for elites.

"The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America has published a study that found that a course also serves as a lung for its surrounding area, a dust pollution filter, absorbs rainwater and prevents erosion," Yuwono Kolopaking, chairman of the Indonesian Golf Course Management Association said.

Urban golf courses in particular were often among the few green spaces left in cities, said Thomas Lee, president of the Malaysian Golf Association.

"I would rather have that than a concrete jungle," he said. "Generally speaking, the argument for golf courses is that it's a green development," he said. "If owners are good, they plant trees, support bird life and do not hurt the place."

Others said golf courses provided badly needed job opportunities to people across the crowded region.

"One 18-hole golf course employs around 600 people. It is one of the industries that still creates jobs during economic crisis," said Avie K. Utomo, a former head of the Indonesian Professional Golfers Association.

"But for many NGOs in Asia golf is an enemy since it is still considered a sport for the elites," he added.

Additional reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan in Bangkok, Jonathan Ansfield in Beijing and Patrick Chalmers in Kuala Lumpur.