Toxic green; the trouble with golf.

Ancient Hawaiians settled in Maunawili because of the proximity to good fishing grounds and because of the abundant water--artesian wells still flow upward at the foot of the mountain. Some of the farmers who now live in the village on the island of Oahu have worked the land for 50 years. Their homes of wood and corrugated metal are nestled amidst groves of trees and banana and ti (Asian shrub) plants. Surrounding these plants are new features on the landscape: two 18-hole golf courses and a clubhouse.

A long-term battle is being fought in this valley, pitting Japanese developers, who want to promote tourism for the island, against subsistence farmers, who are fighting to stop developers from turning their land into golf courses. The farmers have brought the issue to court, but with little legal claim to the land, they are at the mercy and will of a highly politicized legal system. Even if the farmers are relocated by the developers, there will be no compensation for the mature plants they have cultivated for years in the valley. As one farmer observed ruefully, "You can eat vegetables, but you can't eat golf balls."

Around the world, golf course developments are disrupting human and ecological communities in ways rarely contemplated in golfing magazines or clubhouse restaurants: they displace people, destroy habitats, pollute surrounding water and air with their heavy concentrations of fertilizers and pesticides, and deplete public water supplies.

And this damage isn't trivial. The sport is booming and golf course construction is the fastest growing type of land development in the world. Worldwide, there are about 25,000 golf courses that cover an area close to the size of Belgium.

While more than half of the world's 50 million golfers are American, Japan's 12 million golf enthusiasts are the biggest spenders in the game. The combined value of Japanese golf memberships exceeded 10 percent of Japan's gross domestic product in 1988. While a membership in a typical U.S. country club can cost up to $50,000 or more, Japanese golfers can pay as much as $250,000. In fact, it is so expensive to play in Japan that many golfers find it cheaper to jet abroad for golfing vacations.

Surprisingly, golf course development has exploded throughout Southeast Asia, a region that would seem to need many things more than it needs golf resorts. Thailand is now building about one golf course every 10 days, while the number of players in Indonesia and Malaysia is growing 20 to 30 percent each year. Singapore and China are draining paddies and wetlands to make room for the links, while the Vietnamese have donated a protected rainforest, Thu Duc Forest near Saigon, to a course developer from Taiwan. India's golf course development has touched most major ecosystems in the country: golf resorts have been built in the mountains and deserts, and along the coast and floodplains.

For many communities and countries trying to attract income, building golf courses may be a relatively easy way to promote tourism. But their social and environmental costs are often not accounted for in the development equation: Chee Yoke Ling of the Malaysia Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAG'M, pronounced gag'em) calls golf "tourism of the worst kind," the game's pristine, green landscapes genteelly camouflaging its real costs and side effects.

It is debatable whether the economic benefits of golf courses in the Third World are worth the potential environmental and natural resource costs, especially when many countries are facing more serious environmental problems, such as the lack of clean water, food, and arable land. As the golf courses are watered outside Harare, Zimbabwe, for example, people are literally dying of thirst less than 250 miles (400 kilometers) away in Bulawayo, says Pete Raine, director of the Kent Trust for Nature Conservation.

One of golf's lures is developers' promises that courses will create new jobs. In reality, however, the jobs are short-term: 300 to 400 people may be hired for construction, but only 30 to 40 of them will be needed to maintain and operate the course. And most of the permanent, full-time jobs that are created, such as those of greenskeepers, maintenance workers, and pro shop salespeople, offer low wages and minimal training. Thai entrepreneurs have even managed to combine golf with the country's infamous sex tourism industry by requiring caddies to be women. They must attend "training school" and are paid for their after-game "services" by the golfers--usually wealthy businessmen.

King James, the father of golf, would not recognize a golf course built in the 20th century. He introduced golf as a populist game in 15th century Scotland, using Scottish links (areas of dunes and grass-covered marshes between land and sea), pastures, and commons for playing surface, challenging players to overcome the natural lay of the land. This practice of designing courses around grassy sand dunes, mudflats, bushes, ditches, and other natural obstacles continued up until the 1900s.

But as golf expanded throughout the British Empire, it became common to set aside tracts of land specifically for the use of golf. Modern courses favor earth-moving and heart construction to create carefully engineered landscapes. Last year, for example, a golf course operation near Brittas Bay in Wicklow County, Ireland, flattened sand dunes and sprayed peat from a nearby marsh on the dune surface, obliterating the surrounding natural plant species.

The game's gradual transformation into a spectator sport also influenced course design. As golf tournaments with cash prizes grew in popularity and attracted a loyal following, viewing areas grew larger to accommodate more fans and extended areas of rough (natural areas bordering the course) became a thing of the past. Fairways became wider as more inexperienced people started to pick up the game: once typically 30 to 50 meters wide, fairways are now extended up to 90 meters on some courses in Southeast Asia.

The demand for highly manicured lawns also changed the conditions for upkeep and maintenance; large amounts of fertilizers are required for the grass to stay a perfect emerald green, far more than was ever applied to the old style courses in Scotland.

Many of these demands are inherent to the game. The putting greens demand a short, smooth surface of turf to allow the ball to roll straight into the hole. And since they have no deep roots or mature plants, the putting greens are particularly susceptible to insects, disease, humidity, and funguses, and require even more fertilization than the rest of the course. Although they account for a small portion of the total area of a course, the greens allow more of the pesticides and fertilizers to leach into the groundwater because they consist of 70 to 90 percent sand rather than soil.

As forests are cleared to make way for new golf developments, the result is often soil erosion, landslides, and downstream flooding. Hideki Minamikawa of the Japanese National Environmental Agency estimates that by 1987, more than 5,000 hectares of forest were being destroyed in Japan in a single year as a result of golf course development.

Hundreds of acres of tropical forest land have been logged on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia, to make room for a golf resort. At the foot of the highest mountain on Langkawi, the harvest from rice fields has dropped more than 60 percent because the road construction for a hilltop resort has sent tons of earth into streams that provide water for the farmers' fields. Instead of watering the fields, the streams are now choking them--a repercussion caused by just the early stages of construction.

In addition to damaging the surrounding areas, golf courses are often built on farmland, which renders the adjacent cropland useless and sometimes carves up native homelands. In Thailand, two-thirds of the citizens still earn their living off the land, and yet at least two-thirds of all golf courses are built on former agricultural land, making golf the major cause of landlessness among rural people in Thailand, according to a 1988 Labor Force Survey conducted by the National Statistical Office in Bangkok.

But land use and ownership is just one of the difficult issues that has arisen. Operating a golf course also requires a lot of water: three municipal golf courses in Tampa, Florida, use about 560,000 gallons of water a day--enough to meet more than 5,000 Tampa residents' daily water needs. From Las Vegas to Zimbabwe, golf courses are absorbing more and more of the scarce water supplies in arid regions.

Water use depends on many variables including rainfall, climate, type of grass, and surface area. A golf course in southern California, for example, uses as much water in a month as a course of the same size in the temperate region of Baltimore, Maryland uses in a year or longer. In Thailand, after a prolonged drought in 1991, the people of the coastal area of Hua Hin had to buy water that was transported in by truck from the regional water authority after their reservoir dried up. In response, the Thai government tried to prevent golf courses from using water supplies essential to farmers and villagers, but course workers pumped more water from underground aquifers, drained water off reservoirs illegally at night, and installed pipes to siphon water from irrigation ditches to their own reserves. Not only did supplies for drinking water and fields drop, but the drain on aquifers caused land to cave in and springs and ponds to dry up even further.

To address golf's high water consumption, 10 percent of course superintendents in the United States now irrigate grass with waste water instead of relying on public water supplies. Other courses apply sewage to the fairways to provide natural fertilizers for the grass. Golf courses can serve as disposal areas for waste that normally requires expensive treatment, but not without some risk that contaminants will spread to surrounding areas. Similarly, fertilizer and pesticide pose threats both to the environment and to human health when they are mixed together and applied to a large area, such as a golf course.

In the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. golf course superintendents applied arsenic and mercury to give the grass its bright green hue. It wiped out not only insects, but earthworms and birds too. Some courses are now paying more attention to figuring out why the grass is turning brown than to trying to keep the grass a perfect green year-round with chemicals. For the most part, though, heavy fertilizer and pesticide use continues.

The U.S.-based Journal of Pesticide Reform found that 750 kilograms of pesticides are sprayed on a typical course annually, an average of 11 kilograms per hectare. A 1990 New York State Department of Law study reported that of 52 golf courses surveyed on Long Island, the average application rate--18 pounds (8.2 kilograms) of pesticides per treated acre per year--was about seven times the amount of pesticides applied to agricultural land each year, which averages 2.7 pounds (1.2 kilograms). A recent Japanese study showed that 1.5 tons of agricultural chemicals were used each year on golf courses in Japan, about eight times the amount used on rice paddies nearby.

At least one pesticide has been completely banned from use on golf courses because of the danger it posed to birds and other species. In 1985, Ward Stone and Peter Gradoni of New York's Department of Environmental Conservation compiled data that linked the deaths of 700 Atlantic Brant Geese to a recent application of diazinon, an organophosphate insecticide. Diazinon was found to be responsible for more than 50 other cases of poisoning that resulted in the deaths of a variety of birds. After a five-year regulatory battle between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Ciba-Geigy, the chemical's principal manufacturer, diazinon was banned from use on golf courses in the United States. But even the EPA agrees that this case is only "the tip of the iceberg." As Ward Stone testified before EPA officials in 1987, "Most kills are not reported, and may not even be observed."

Pesticides have serious human health effects, too. In 1983, Navy Lieutenant George Prior, a healthy 30-year old, was playing golf at the Arlington Army and Navy Country Club near Washington, D.C. After his round, he complained of headaches, fever, and nausea. Within three days, his skin was covered with a severe rash and blisters hung from his back and arms. He developed pneumonia, his kidneys failed, and he fell into a coma and died just 20 days after the game. His autopsy revealed that he suffered a lethal allergic reaction to chlorothalonil, one of golf's most common pesticides.

A survey of Japanese doctors in 1991 showed that of some 500 patients "with suspected poisoning from agricultural chemicals, 125 were associated with golf courses, 97 as employees." Symptoms included skin rashes, respiratory illnesses, asthma, allergic rhinitis, disorders of eye, ear, and throat, and damage to the central nervous system. The U.S. National Association of Golf Superintendents is now funding research on the links between long-term pesticide exposure, cancer, and rates of mortality for greenskeepers, players, and caddies.

The difficulties associated with measuring actual levels of pesticides and establishing direct links between contamination and spraying make monitoring and accountability problematic. And even when pesticide use is banned on completed courses, pesticides may still be used during construction. Hydrogen peroxide may be used to "harden" soil for turf while a course is being built, for example.

A Japanese company, the Ryokuei Group, began to address some of these problems in 1990, when it announced plans to build 15 "chemical-free" courses in Japan. Members are asked to take an active role in maintaining the courses, which includes weeding the greens and planting fruit trees to attract birds that will help to reduce the insect population. Although these courses are still the exception to the rule, they provide a valuable working model for safer golf courses.

Other courses have experimented with different varieties of grass to increase pest control. Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a strategy that uses a combination of biological and chemical control methods to reduce water and fertilizer usage, has been used on a few golf courses, primarily in Europe and the United States. But most improvements have usually come only in response to public pressure and government oversight. And often, even that is not enough.

With billions of dollars at stake in golf course design and development, many companies are willing to pay a high price for real estate and the various legal permits needed to build courses. Some even make illegal payoffs to zoning officials and local politicians. Because of the high economic stakes involved, many communities are now subsidizing golf course development through tax incentives and authorizing use of public goods such as water, land, and access roads. The Paradise Bay Golf resort on Bantam Island, for example, is being jointly funded by investors in Japan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia, but the Indonesian government has to provide the necessary water, electricity, roads, and airport access.

As the public has become more aware of the potential environmental and human health costs in recent years, opposition to golf courses has grown and some communities have begun pushing for development policies that will minimize long-term damage and risks. GAG'M, the global anti-golf organization, has gathered local support by voicing opposition in newspapers and at hearings, monitoring proposal contracts, and suing developers for compensation. Since 1989, the group has halted the development of more than 300 golf courses in Japan. In Malaysia, GAG'M and local environmentalists halted a proposed international resort complex with golf on Penang Hill, a critical water catchment area supplying almost half the water needs of Penang Island.

GAG'M is not alone in its crusade. The European Golf Association has agreed to adopt environmental guidelines and the Dutch Golf Federation is developing ways to preserve wildlife in the rough. In August, the governing state council in China ordered a ban on new golf courses and a limit on coastal resort construction to reduce land speculation.

In the United States, the New York State Audubon Society has registered more than 900 courses in its Cooperative Sanctuary program, which was funded in part by the US. Golf Association in 1991. To qualify for certification, a course must implement environmentally correct management, which includes environmental planning, public involvement, IPM, and water enhancement and conservation. Of the 900 courses registered, however, only 11 have met all the criteria, and often, individual superintendents have more to do with the land use practices than does any outside approval.

Baltimore County, Maryland, now requires the use of IPM and monitoring devices to measure chemical leaching into groundwater before it will issue a golf course water permit. Maryland's Queenstown Harbor Golf Links on the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore has preserved the local wildlife and foliage by building a boardwalk instead of filling or dredging out its wetlands and marshes. And some courses even use biodegradable tees made of vegetable starch and golf carts fueled by natural gas to decrease the environmental impacts of the game.

Perhaps the golf industry should consider a return to its roots: courses landscaped by nature, not bulldozers--as envisioned by the Scots when they invented the game. "In this age of increasing environmental awareness," says Gen Morita, leader of the Japanese GAG'M group, "there is no more room on earth to destroy nature for the sake of a mere game."

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Global Network Anti-Golf Course Action (GNAGA) Gen Morita 1047 Naka, Kamogawa, Chiba, Japan 296-01 Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Asia-Pacific Peoples' Environment Network (APPEN) Chee Yoke Ling 19 Kelawai Road 10250 Penang, Malaysia Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Asian Tourism Action Network (ANTENNA) Anita Pleumarom 55/185 M. Sarantom 2 Soi Nuan Chan Sukhaphibal 1 Rd., Bangkok 10230, Thailand Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Donna Wong United States Liaison, GAG'M 1525 Uluha'o St. Kailua, Hawaii 96734, United States Tel: [phone]

Anne Platt is a staff researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, where she studies oceans, fisheries, and environmental health issues.