The course will include two 18-hole championship courses, along with villas and hotels, and a golf academy. It will be paradise for golfers. To environmentalists, it's a nightmare.
In order to build his beautiful courses, Trump needs beautiful landscapes, and that is exactly what he has secured here. The sand dunes of Balmedie are a popular beauty spot, frequented by walkers and local residents, but they're more than that. They're also rare and protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The sand dunes are mobile, making them almost unique in Britain. In the course design, the last nine holes of one course will traverse the dunes themselves. In order to do this, the dunes would need to be stabilised, destroying the most important feature of the landscape as well as damaging local wildlife habitats.
It would have been possible to build the course without encroaching onto the dunes, but Trump was adamant that this was not possible: "The last 9 holes cannot be relocated" says the official website. "The reason for this statement is that the relocation of the last 9 holes would not result in the formation of a world class golf course capable of attracting visitors from all over the world and could not sustain the proposed project."
Despite opposition from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, and the Botanical Society of the British Isles, not to mention local residents, the huge £1 billion development will go ahead. With the courses and the hotels will be a spa, tennis clubs, conference facilities and an estate of 950 luxury holiday homes, all stretching across 1400 acres. The only thing in the area larger than the golf complex will be Donald Trump's ego - the course will be known as Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, and will be accessed along Trump Boulevard.
While the dunes are a particularly extreme example, Balmedie is not the only place where this pastime for the wealthy elite has taken precedence over science and nature. Golf is, in fact, one of the world's most environmentally irresponsible sports.
The big problem with golf is that it requires perfectly manicured lawns. While these are fairly easy to maintain in the land of golf's origins, rainy Scotland, the same cannot be said of Las Vegas, for example, or Dubai. And yet, fans of the game insist on being able to play wherever they might be in the world, no matter what the cost in land and water.
The Spanish coast is one part of the world that has suffered disproportionately from golfing development. Its sunny coastlines have been a popular destination for pale and pasty Europeans for decades. Scandinavians, Britons, and now wealthy Russians, have all made a tradition of catching some winter sun in the Costa Brava. To attract and maintain the custom of tourists, holiday makers, and second home owners, local developers have been keen to lay on every possible luxury, and that includes golf courses.
According to the WWF report Fresh Water and Tourism in the Mediterranean (pdf), golf courses in the region require 10,000 and 15,000 cubic metres of water per hectare per year. With each golf course being between 50 to 150 hectares, a golf course can consume 1 million cubic metres of water a year, equivalent to a town of 12,000 inhabitants.
The use of water on golf courses has contributed to the critical water problems on the Spanish coast. UNEP's Plan Bleu for water use in the Mediterranean shows that Spain is over-exploiting its renewable water sources by 0.7 cubic kilometres per year. The Crevillente Aquifer near Alicante has seen water levels drop a grand 430 metres since it was first tapped in 1962. Water use in the Mediterranean is perilously unsustainable. That precious aquifers should be drained for golf is a tragically short-term view of the world, where a game today is valued over drinking water and agriculture in the future.
Worldwide, there are 31,500 golf courses. The Ecologist reports that together they consume 9.5 billion litres of water every single day.
As if the water problem wasn't reason enough to get those golf clubs on Freecycle, there's the pesticides issue. Analysis of pesticide use on golf greens (pdf) shows that an average acre is treated with three and a half pounds of herbicides a year, three and a half pounds of fungicides, and two and a half pounds of insecticides. This is over three times as intensive as usual agriculture, where a typical acre of farmland would receive around one pound of pesticide in any given year. The effects of this on wildlife should be obvious, birds being the main victim.
Pesticides also seep into groundwater. The Golf Course Superintendent Association of America denies this: "Studies consistently show that a well-managed golf course can actually improve water quality on and around the facility. Research also shows that when pesticides and fertilizers are used properly, they do not tend to seep into groundwater or run off in surface water." However, ground water tests in Cape Cod in the late eighties discovered several different pesticides, and one (now banned) substance was present at levels 200 times over the health guidance level. More recent studies have also shown that vegetation ‘buffer zones' can keep pesticides contained, but heavy rainfall can cause run-off. A government study into run-off from golf courses is presently underway.
Use of chemicals on golf courses is, to be fair to the industry, being scaled back. In fact, chemical use is being used to justify a major push for genetically engineered turf. Roundup-ready turf exists, and remains controversial, mainly because of a trial that went badly wrong last year. Scotts Company was fined earlier this year after their GM modified bentgrass was found growing 3 miles downwind in protected national grasslands. The escape prompted the USDA to run its first full environmental assessment of a GM plant.
With its irresponsible water and chemical use, GM controversies, not to mention the social exclusion of the sport, perhaps golf has had its day. In the book ‘Do Good lives have to cost the earth?', sport historian David Goldblatt sees a potential future where the game "will enter its twilight as the strictest reserve of the uber-elite in a water-short, land-ravaged world." Or perhaps we can come to our senses. We don't need to give up on it altogether. Where it can be played sustainably, like Scotland, we can continue, especially when it is played on the marginal heath and moorland where it originated. In the deserts of Utah, Arizona, or the Arabian Gulf, it is high time the golf courses were given back to the dunes.
This article was contributed to Celsias by Jeremy Williams
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