Golf courses are lush, green swaths of landscape. But protesters claim they are Damaging developments for the landscape. Jim Gilchrist investigates.

The Scotsman, 20 May 2000

"GOLF," said Andrew Carnegie, "is an indispensable adjunct to high civilisation." The millionaire philanthropist made the remark when leaving £200,000 for a course at Yale University. A century on, his sentiments may not be shared by the farmers around his former home of Skibo Castle in Sutherland, where this week another millionaire, entrepreneur Peter de Savary, has raised agricultural hackles by proposing to scrap a 374-acre farm on the Skibo Estate and replace it with a golf course.

The objections to the proposal, which will be recommended for approval before Highland Council’s planning committee on Monday, have come from the local farming community, which points to the potential loss of scarce, quality land. The complaints comes less than a year after a major planning debacle over a £50 million golf and conference centre development planned for Kingask on the outskirts of St Andrews, which, despite calls for the intervention of Donald Dewar, eventually went through, albeit in a slightly modified form. Another application, involving two golf courses and residential lodges at Scoonie Hill, St Andrews, will come before the planners in the near future amid fears that the ancient streets of the Fife town, regarded as the home of golf, could become a traffic-jammed golfing theme park.

Scottish protesters may resort to the democratic process, but in some other parts of the world, those objecting to golf courses may, quite literally, take to the barricades. In 1990, Canada’s Mohawk people took up arms against a municipal golf course development which infringed on their ancestral lands. The result was a months-long siege by police and soldiers, with the Mowhawks eventually surrendering. In Tepoztlan, Mexico, a proposed luxury course and development prompted a heated "golf war" as locals protested over water use and dangerous chemicals, as well as the potential raising of property taxes and impact on the community. The $311 million development was eventually scrapped after battles between police and demonstrators, and two deaths .

According to the Malaysia-based Asia-Pacific People’s Environment Network, golf development is becoming one of the most unsustainable and damaging activities to people and the environment. It all seems a far cry from a bracing morning’s pursuit of the little white ball, followed by a convivial dram at the 19th hole, but golf has become an environmental issue worldwide. And if the concerns of displaced Japanese agricultural workers, of landless poor in Thailand, or of Malaysians stricken by water shortage and cholera – all as a result of golf course development – seem comfortably far away, the number of golfing developments in Scotland over recent years, and the associated objections, suggests that teeing-off may become a more contentious business in future.

Skibo, on the shores of the Dornoch Firth, already boasts one championship course, which has hosted such golfing luminaries as Fred Couples and Greg "White Shark" Norman . The proposed £4 million second course, which will also eliminate the neighbouring 80-acre Baldruim Wood, is aimed at attracting international golf tournaments, while allowing members of his exclusive Carnegie Club at Skibo to continue to play the existing championship course. But, as Joan Geddes of the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland points out, if de Savary wants the proposed course to attract international tournaments, he will need to build associated facilities to the required, and presumably five-star, standards. "Often it isn’t the golf course that’s the trouble, it’s the associated development – houses, conference facilities, hotels – often in an inappropriate location," says Geddes.

Desmond Fernandes, co-ordinator of the Institute of Tourism and Development Studies at De Montfort University, Bedford, and a member of the Global Anti-Golf Movement, points out that the Skibo row illustrates wider issues which apply worldwide on the way courses and resorts can impact on communities and on their environment, often without lack of local consultation. He also expresses concern at the way in which golfing resorts and holidays are often marked as "green tourism", yet can impact drastically on the environment.

Golf course developers and tourism promoters, for their part, argue that golf courses also bring jobs and boost the local economy. Last October, golf was said to be the panacea for Scotland’s ailing tourism industry, with Henry McLeish, the minister responsible for tourism, announcing a campaign to attract more golfing visitors.

Last December, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, which reckons that visiting golfers spend some £20 million annually in its area alone, held a seminar urging Highland golf courses to use more environmentally-friendly and cost-effective management techniques. A spokesman for HIE said: "The Highlands and Islands tend to be fairly disadvantaged in terms of agricultural land, so that kind of land use conflict isn’t a big issue. What is of more concern to us is that we make golf more professional and maximise the income we get from it."

Among those addressing the seminar was Jonathan Smith, an adviser to the Scottish Golf Course and Wildlife Group, who describes Scotland’s golf industry as "way ahead of its European counterparts in terms of environmental management.

"This is a unique partnership between the golfing and environmental sectors, encouraging clubs to look at their management practises, minimising chemical use, planting the right tree species ..."

Smith reckons that Scotland’s coastal areas probably can’t sustain many more golf courses, although there is still scope in agricultural areas, if a course is seen as economically feasible. "The de Savary case sounds more like an issue of land economics than environment. If a golf course is correctly located, designed, constructed and managed," adds Smith, "it can be a very positive addition to the landscape."

Planning debacles over golf courses can lead to entertaining David and Goliath confrontations. In Ireland last year, for instance, there was the episode of Great White Shark vs The Snail, when Australian golf star Norman’s plans for a IR£12.5 million golfing resort on Ireland’s west coast seemed imperilled by the rare, whorl snail and the intervention of the European Commission. Construction has now gone ahead, with assurances that the snail will be safeguarded.

It may take more than a snail to thwart de Savary’s plans. However, lessons may be learned about integrating golf with community and environment, ensuring Carnegie’s definition of the sport as "an adjunct to civilisation".

History of the game

Golf is widely believed to have originated in Scotland, although there are those who believe it may have roots in the Netherlands. Whatever its earliest origins, it was on the east coast of Scotland that the sport developed and it is Scotland which has exported the game worldwide. The name derives from the Lowland Scots word gowff – to strike.

In its earlier days, the sport wasn’t always approved by the establishment, being seen as a distraction from other more pressing pursuits such as archery, and in 1457, James II (rigth) decreed that "the futeball and golfe be utterly cryed down and not to be used".

From James IV onwards, however, the Stewart kings were keen golfers and when "Jamie the Saxt" of Scotland became James VI of England, he took the game south with him.

The game as we know it today started to evolve with the formation of golfing clubs during the 18th century, the oldest of them being the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which played its first competition for a silver cup on Leith Links in 1744. Ten years later, golfers in St Andrews similarly met and subscribed for a silver club, the winner of which would become club captain. The St Andrews club would go on to become the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, the governing body for world golf.

The first Open Championship was played at Prestwick on 17 October 1860.

The second half of the 19th century saw the game flourish in Scotland. The developing rail network was one reason for this, but it was the advent of the gutta percha ball, around 1880, that was the single major factor in the explosion of the popularity of the game.

Today, 251,000 people in Scotland play golf regularly on the country’s 500 courses. Sixty new courses have opened over the last decade.

Seeing Green

Golf is worth approximately £100 million per annum to the Scottish economy, and a national golf strategy for Scotland is currently being prepared by the Scottish executive, with details to be announced later this year.

Primarily a tourism document, the strategy will, however, contain specific action points relating to the environment and is expected to encourage golf clubs and those employed within the golf industry to adopt more environmentally-aware working practices.

Henry McLeish, the minister responsible for tourism, has highlighted golf as the key to reversing this country's declining international tourism industry, and apart from the national strategy under preparation, the Scottish Tourist Board has been asked to prepare proposals to further develop golf tourism and to implement them as quickly as possible.

Launching a promotional campaign for Scottish golf last year, Mr McLeish said: "Scotland is renowned across the world as the true home of golf. No other nation has that concept that they can sell."

Golf's environmental impact

Campaining organisations such as the Global Anti-Golf Movement believe that the evolution of golf courses and golf-related tourism into a multi-billion-dollar industry has resulted in widespread speculation, "hit and run" development and other dubious practices that threaten environments and communities, particularly in the Asia-Pacific area. They point out that with the bursting of the economic bubble in South-East Asia, many golf-related companies have become bankrupt, with investors and banks bearing the brunt of these losses.

In environmental terms, they regard golf courses as a form of monoculture, with non-indigenous soil and grass as well as fertilisers and pesticides upsetting the natural balance. Quite apart from the amounts of water required to maintain a course, the associated landscaping work can disrupt local water sources and lead to contamination, with resulting health problems. In Hokkaido Island, Japan, golf-related works killed 90,000 fish from a neighbouring aquaculture project; in the US, lakes have been permanently affected by dumping of nitrate run-off from courses.

Because locations are often decided by the beauty of the existing landscape, natural ecosystems are destroyed, while the heavy concentration of pesticides and other chemicals used in maintaining courses can cause skin rashes , respiratory illnesses, allergies and damage to the central nervous system.

In some cases, local populations have been displaced by large-scale golfing developments, as in Japan, where thousands of agriculture workers have been removed from lands they have worked for years, in exchange for short-term employment during construction and a few low-paid jobs once courses are finished.