Environmental Principles for Golf Course Development

To achieve long term sustainability, environmental responsibility must be one of the core values of the Golf Industry and should be the cornerstone on which all golf developments are designed, constructed and managed.

The aims and objectives within Environmental Policy Statements for each development, it is important to incorporate sound environmental principals throughout the design, construction and management process. Those outlined below, although from an American based source are of universal value and are fundamentally the same for projects anywhere throughout the world. The adoption of these will provide a strong basis for environmental responsibility to educate and inform the public and relevant decision makers about environmental responsibility, and to help set goals for environmental performance.

These principles will become the performance criteria on which all work undertaken on the project can be evaluated.

Environmental Principles

• To enhance local communities ecologically and economically.
• To develop environmentally responsible golf courses that are economically viable.
• To offer and protect habitat for wildlife and plant species.
• To recognize that every golf course must be developed and managed with consideration for the unique conditions of the ecosystem of which it is a part.
• To provide important green space benefits.
• To use natural resources efficiently.
• To respect adjacent land use when planning, constructing, maintaining and operating golf courses.
• To create desirable playing conditions through practices that preserve environmental quality.
• To support ongoing research to scientifically establish new and better ways to develop and manage golf courses in harmony with the environment.
• To document outstanding development and management practices to promote a more widespread implementation of environmentally sound golf.
• To educate golfers and potential developers about the principles of environmental responsibility and to promote the understanding that environmentally sound golf courses are quality golf courses.

It is only with a commitment to such a policy that the development has any chance of succeeding as an environmentally sound project. These principles are used as base design criteria during the process of design, construction and management for the many elements of the golf course development.