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Golf has a responsibility to all people - not simply golfers - and not just those with a direct financial, business or employment involvement in the sport.  

People who play golf, and those who invest and work in the industry are global citizens, with a personal stake in the health of the planet. In particular, people who live close to golf facilities deserve to have their own needs considered during the planning, design, construction and long term management of a facility or resort.

Best Management Practices

Making a Connection

  • Protect and maintain areas as local nature reserves, and allow managed access
  • Allow continuation of traditional agricultural and livestock activities on neighbouring land
  • Protect, enhance and sensitively interpret historical and cultural information
  • Create cultural heritage centres linked to the golf development, which can be utilised by local communities
  • Invest in local education and recreation projects such as schools, playing fields and equipment
  • Allow managed use of resort facilities for local community meetings and events

Even the most exclusive resorts can deliver wide ranging benefits to local people, including those not directly employed. Extending investment in major infrastructure projects to tie in with local community upgrades - in particular energy and water - are key ways in which a golf facility or resort can integrate with local people.

Exclusive should not simply equate with exclusion

Golf developments have huge potential to be highly-valued as flagships of integrated economic development, environmental protection and social equity.

Golf should be sensitive to the holistic value of land, and in particular people’s often long-standing rights to access land for subsistence and other forms of recreation.

Rather than being a threat to development, this kind of stakeholder based approach to consultation should be seen as an opportunity. An opportunity to learn about the unique cultural and historical values of the site and its surroundings; an opportunity to learn about key characteristics of the site (how vulnerable certain areas are to flooding, how local people access the site, what is the site's historical context).

Engaging with and listening to local community opinion is about establishing your golf facility as a social and environmental asset.

With the right approach golf facilities can avoid their reputation being damaged from the outset as a result of high profile conflict with local people.

It is distinctly possible, and indeed advantageous, to find a development and long-term management model which is roundly valued - for its economic impact, and also for the way it enhances people's physical and mental wellbeing through healthy recreation; environmental quality; protection of local cultural distinctiveness and tradition; and protection and enhancement of access to local natural resources.

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