A book written by some of the occupants of the ZAD (Zone a Défendre) – a site in Western France which has been occupied for over 9 years – in resistance against the construction of the planned Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport. Over 5,000 acres of farmland and wetladns would be destroyed. Evictions and mass protests are documented, and the sustained solidarity which has held the ZAD together for so many years. The ZAD is a ray of hope in the resistance against destructive megaprojects.
Indigenous Islanders are Employing Shamanic Symbolism to Resist Jeju Island’s Proposed 2nd Airport.
Residents of Jeju Island (South Korea) are resisting a proposed airport that would displace people from five villages. The project has been imposed on local communities without consultation, and with little consideration on how the planned influx of millions of tourists would impact on rural people. The majority of local people oppose the airport, and it is being met with a series of protests.
Onpyoung Village resident in costume, speaking as the Youngdeung Goddess at a demonstration last week. The goddess is worshipped in a rite performed by shamans each lunar February.
Indigenous residents of Jeju Island’s southeastern region are employing traditional shamanic culture to protest the airport that is slated to displace the populations of five villages. So far, the mainstream media outside of Jeju has done little to document resistance to the project. The new airport is opposed by the majority of residents in the villages affected. Hundreds of locals from Onpyoung and Sinsan villages, elderly and young alike, including middle school students, have enacted a series of demonstrations against the development.
Residents dressed as Jeju’s three founding father figures, Go, Yang and Boo, the mythical original residents of Jeju Island.
“You’re trashing our hometown and we’ll have nowhere to go.”
Farmers and women divers (haenyo) from the village gather in front…
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What do we get for ruining the Goyt Valley?
Communities around Manchester Airport are facing massive road building projects. It is claimed that new roads will ease traffic congestion. In reality the eye-poppingly expensive road building will create more traffic, with the inevitable increase in health damaging air pollution, and ruin homes, countryside and unique local heritage.
An old Hazel Grove-to-Bredbury bypass plan has been dusted off, with the Government paying £350,000 for a new feasibility study. Since the study is being carried out by the road’s long-term promoters, Stockport Council, don’t expect it to be objective.
The Bypass would be a four-
and-a-half mile dual-carriageway extension of the A6-to-Manchester Airport “relief road”, which is already under construction (the red route in the map). It’s the latest in a series of new roads claimed to sort out the terrible congestion south of Manchester. The bypass would cost a huge £580 million! The result might not be what people imagine….
More traffic problems The bypass will draw drivers into and through Stockport from all directions – M56, A34, M60 and A6. To start with, some local roads will see moderate traffic reductions, but these may be short-lived. At times there will be so much traffic on the bypass that local drivers will struggle to…
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Statement on Tourism, Aviation and Children’s Rights
Can we still have hope that at the end of the United Nations climate conference (COP21) in Paris a good and fair agreement will be reached that works for people and not profits? The sad truth is that negotiators there act as if travel and tourism, which belong to the great contributors of greenhouse gases, do not exist.
With new research suggesting that emissions from global tourism and aviation are likely to increase by 300% by the end of the century, it is also highly ironic that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) celebrates an International Civil Aviation Day on 7 December to promote air travel as a mode of mass transport that is “safe, secure and sustainable”.
Please find below and in the attachment a Statement of the Tourism Action and Advocacy Forum (TAAF), which calls for the implementation of special measures in the aviation and tourism industries to protect today’s children and future generations. The Statement has been delivered to COP21 in Paris and we would like to ask you to share it widely.
AVIATION, TOURISM & CHILDREN’S RIGHTS:
A GLOBAL EMERGENCY
Statement of the Tourism Advocacy and Action Forum (TAAF)
Prepared by the International Support Centre for Sustainable Tourism
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which celebrates International Aviation Day on 7 December calls air transport “by far the safest mode of mass transportation”1. With climate change careening beyond acceptable limits, and the biosphere endangered by mass tourism, we must broaden our concepts of safety.
If we evaluate safety through an inter-generational lens, the airline business ranks among the most unsafe human enterprises. Promoting air travel elevates not only greenhouse gas emissions, but also consumer lifestyles, consumption patterns and relationships which are unsustainable.
Herein lies a major dilemma for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), and the Rio Conventions generally. Tourism, considered a sustainable industry and major contributor to a ‘green economy’ by the United Nations, is actually putting humanity on the Red List as endangered.
The precautionary principle must be applied to tourism. At the third United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (or Earth Summit) in 2012, tourism was endorsed without regard for local contexts of concern or the emerging global context of harm2. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is mandated to promote tourism, as a hub for unrestricted economic growth. This engenders mass tourism: in practice, exponential growth.
Globally, our binge spending on tourism is destabilizing the future of children. The mass mobility of consumers drives climate change. In turn, it amplifies biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, water shortages, social inequality, conflict (including domestic violence), forced migration, and often cultural vulnerabilities. Calling this set of behaviours ‘tourism’ masks its devastating consequences across generations.
Only a few decades ago tourism had a seasonality and geography which offered some room for regulation. Today, the tourism industry pushes all-season expansion, on a planetary scale. Tourism corridors now enwrap the Earth, expediting urbanization. Consumer society views aviation as a commute to global playgrounds and shopping outposts. This has normalized the practice of consumers grazing for excitement and deals worldwide. It raises complex moral questions about the underlying economic model3. Unchecked expansion of tourism has impinged on other peoples’, species’ and now generations’ flourishing and survival.
The aggregate impacts of “2.3 billion passengers a year on more than 26 million flights worldwide”4 is difficult to fathom. Tourism, being highly cross-sectoral, has a magnitude of harm beyond other industries. Although the assessment of impacts often is framed narrowly – without adequately bridging all involved economic sectors and affected community realms – recent research shows the correlations between tourism and risky outcomes across various ecological, social and cultural systems globally5. The composite of impacts is summarized in scientific literature as a crisis or even precipice for humanity6. This news brings increasing anxiety, distress, trauma and other threats to mental and emotional health, especially for children worldwide.
Since the U.N. prioritized sustainable development in 1992, there has been scant attention to reducing tourism. Worldwide, governments, financial institutions, multinational corporations and investors still advance a marketing narrative that tourism is benign, if not beneficial. Airport expansions and aerotropolis construction abound7. The aviation sector is pursuing growth, as if that is a lawful option under present biosphere constraints. Business proceeds as if there is no inter-generational context to international law or to fundamental human rights.
Globally, the persons with weakest citizenship are most vulnerable to this economic model. Children shoulder its costs more than any other population. This is evident in the global supply ‘chains’ of the tourism industry; for example, among oppressed populations and impoverished families of the global South, exploited in manufacturing tourism spaces, infrastructure, souvenirs and experiences. It also manifests in the biosphere crisis now endangering all children worldwide. While the net effect is to diminish children’s capabilities, such costs are little documented outside the research enclaves of child labour and child sex trafficking.
The ideology of economic growth now puts an entire generation of children at risk. Aviation, a mainstay of this ideology, is a primary cause of accruing ecological and social imbalances globally. This ‘big picture’ of aviation – especially its role as a key structural element of neoliberal economics – must be assessed, for us to comprehend the full spectrum of inter-generational costs associated with tourism growth.
Tourism prompts integration into the very economic model which causes widespread harm. Children of affluent societies are groomed to be consumers – the pinnacle being to become a tourist, with precocious stories of travel abroad. Children in impoverished destination areas experience dehumanizing and degrading exchanges through tourism. For both, childhood soon involves more transactions than rites of passage. Meanwhile, adult travellers valuing attachment with their own children often practice detachment as tourists: loading up child porters and waving away child vendors. The Asia-Pacific Child Rights Award for Television and other child-centred research initiatives raise awareness about such dynamics. As tourism displaces communities, disrupts in situ conservation, supercedes customary practice requiring mobility (such as shifting cultivation and pastoralism), and eclipses the mobility needs of refugee children, affected children are deprived of life essentials, safety, and cultural health and must adapt to life on the economic fringes.
We therefore appeal to COP21 to evaluate aviation and tourism in meaningful context, implementing special measures to safeguard today’s children and future generations, including:
* prioritizing inter-generational rights and responsibilities, in U.N. decision-making;
* foregrounding an ethic of care, to hasten implementation of the Rio Conventions;
* correcting the misleading narratives of tourism, to protect human rights
* setting limits for the aviation sector, which address its systemic impacts and the urgent need for degrowth of both tourism and other unnecessary travel;
* centring the well-being of children and future generations in evaluation frameworks;
* implementing the full framework of human rights of children, as per international law
* applying the capabilities approach to make children visible in benefit/cost equations and to remedy the inter-generational harms of gross domestic product (GDP) ideology;8
* identifying the mobility needs of children which are impeded or superceded by tourism, including their developmental needs and specific cultural rights to mobility.
A child-centred approach to managing climate change must be adhered to in the aviation and tourism industries.
For further information contact the Tourism Advocacy & Action Forum c/o taaforum@gmail.com or ISCST at sustour@axionet.com
References:
Third World Resurgence – tourism issue
The September / October 2015 issue of Third World Resurgence magazine, published by the Third World Network, is a double issue with a special focus on tourism. The digital edition of the magazine is now available as a pdf file.
The tourism section of the magazine is introduced with an in-depth article by Anita Pleumarom, coordinator of the Bangkok based Tourism Investigation & Monitoring Team (tim-team) and member of the Tourism Advocacy and Action Forum (TAAF) and includes the following articles:
- Tourism – a driver of inequality and displacement – Anita Pleumarom
- Tourism and the biosphere crisis: Provisions for inter-generational care – Alison M Johnston
- Rise of the aerotropolis – Rose Bridger
- Tourism for women’s rights? – Albertina Almeida
- Maasai fight eviction from Tanzanian community land by US-based ecotourism company – Susanna Nordlund
- The puputan struggle against the Benoa Bay reclamation project – Anton Muhajir
- Tourism, the extractive industry and social conflict in Peru – Rodrigo Ruiz Rubio
- Tourism and the consumption of Goa – Claude Alvares
- The occidentalisation of the Everest – Vaishna Roy
- The getthoisation of Palestine – tourism as a tool of oppression and resistance – Freya Higgins-Desbiolles
- The bitter irony of ‘1 billion tourists – 1 billion opportunities’
The magazine critiques the assumption that expansion of the tourism industry is an economic panacea for poor countries – a passport to eradicating poverty, providing livelihoods for poor and marginalised communities. Massive expansion of tourism is championed by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), which also proclaims broader social benefits of preserving cultural heritage and protection of precious ecosystems and biodiversity.
Yet research of the impact of tourism, over many decades, refutes these purported miraculous benefits. Only a minimal proportion of tourists’ expenditure remains in the host community. Most of the profits are siphoned off by transnational firms – tourism operators, airlines and hotel chains. Megatourism projects supported by governments follow neoliberal diktats of privatization, deregulation and financial liberalization, all of which benefit big business.
In spite of the wealth of evidence that tourism has a very poor record of lifting people out of poverty, vast amounts of aid funding – from foreign governments, international and multilateral aid agencies – is spent on luxury tourism facilities such as five star hotels, in the midst of impoverished communities lacking even basic housing and amenities. And, instead of protecting cultural heritage and ecosystems, mega tourism complexes – such as integrated resorts combining hotels and entertainment facilities like casinos, marinas for supersized yachts and islands devoted entirely to tourism that require large scale land reclamation – destroy vast swaths of these precious assets.
A proliferation of tourist developments that are supposedly ‘eco’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘pro-poor’ fails to live up to these self-adopted labels. In the main such projects are still controlled by big business. Crucially, international tourism’s supposed sustainability and environmental credentials are seriously and fundamentally undermined by heavy dependence on highly carbon intensive aviation. This dependence is deepening with the widespread planning and construction of aerotropolis projects, highlighted as epitomising the ‘mindless, destructive development engendered by tourism’.
Global travel and tourism growth continues. The sector is forecast to grow by more than 3.5% in 2015, a growth rate over 1% higher than global GDP.
Check out the Tourism Critic Facebook page for regular updates about the negative impacts of unsustainable tourism on society and the natural environment, particularly in developing countries. Tourism Critic aims to mobilize people, groups and networks to help reshape debates around tourism in favour of narratives supporting human rights, social, ecological and climate justice, and equitable, sustainable development. For more information on the negative impacts of tourism growth in Southeast Asia and southern China see the Southeast Asia Tourism Monitor (sea-tm) bi-monthly newsletter.
Leaflet distributed at the Climate March today by groups from the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network
Landholders of San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, successfully resisted plans to build a mega-airport on farmlands in 2001. In 2006, the government punished the community with a brutal police raid. The propject was revived, even larger than before, in 2014. Resistance continues, and UK based Dorset Chiapas Solidarity is urging people to write to the two UK firms that have been contracted as the airport’s architect and engineering consultant.
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Leaflet distributed at the Climate Change March in Edinburgh
Defending their lands and opposing the new airport in Mexico City
On the front line of Blockadia, resisting climate change
Solidarity with the people of San Salvador Atenco
British companies are involved
Take action!
In her book THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING – CAPITALISM VS THE CLIMATE, Naomi Klein writes of the central importance of Blockadia. She describes how round the globe local people are taking direct action to resist extreme extractive industries and mega-projects which cause great damage to the environment and contribute significantly to climate change. One such struggle is happening now in Mexico.
In 2001, the indigenous common landholders of San Salvador Atenco were successful in their fight against the building of a new airport in Mexico City on their ancestral farm lands. The Peoples Front in Defence of the Land (FPDT) became emblematic for their highly symbolic machetes…
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GAAM Aerotropolis Update, No. 2
The second issue of GAAM Aerotropolis Update has been published. It looks at a total of 46 aerotropolis developments, in all regions of the world, with major land allocation for greenfield projects (on undeveloped land). Maps created for GAAM show the land area for three major aerotropolis projects:
- plans for KZN (KwaZulu-Natal) Aerotropolis, around King Shaka Airport in South Africa, span over 200 square kilometres
- plans for Long Thanh aerotropolis, in Vietnam, covers 50 square kilometres, requiring relocation of 15,000 people, and that’s just for phase one
- the Atlanta Aerotropolis Alliance highlights an area of 418 square kilometres, predominantly urban and suburban land with areas of woodland
At the other end of the scale, the smallest aerotropolis developments cover a few hectares, but still raise concerns of loss of ecosystems and preferential treatment for firms, such as tax breaks. The Update covers just a fraction of what is happening worldwide. Material is already being compiled for Issue 3. If you missed Issue 1 it is available on the GAAM Aerotropolis Update page.
Parasitic Urbanization: The Transformation of Istanbul
There are a lot of internet videos promoting aerotropolis projects – here is one that is critical. ‘Parasitic Urbanization: The Transformation of Istanbul’, a talk by Cihan Uzunçarşılı Baysal
The presentation highlights Istanbul’s airport, currently under construction, and other mega infrastructure projects in the region, which are symptomatic of the phenomenon of “planetary urbanisation”. What is happening with this wave of urban development is not new cities, it is not settlements that are contained within boundaries. A new type of urbanisation is extending its influence over the entire surface of the earth, even encroaching into the atmosphere and into the oceans and underground. A key characteristic of this new wave of urbanisation is that it is “parasitic” – it depends on nutrition from its host – sucking in water and other resources from a large hinterland area.
Baysal describes Istanbul’s third airport as an “ecocide” project. Forest is being felled and lakes filled, on a massive scale, and not just for an airport; land is being prepared for an ‘aerotropolis’ extending over a much larger area. An aerotropolis is the opposite of traditional airports, built to serve an established city. An aerotropolis is an airport-centric development, commercial development around an airport that is designed to serve aviation growth.
The talk explains that Istanbul’s third airport is one of the largest of no less than 43 megaprojects underway and planned in the region – most notably a third Bridge across the Bosphorus Strait and a canal alongside it. There is no democratic process whatsoever for deciding to embark on the megaprojects; they are imposed by the government and the firms awarded contracts. Citizens simply do now know what “insane” scheme is going to be announced next.
Campaigners against the Istanbul megaprojects make use of satellite images to reveal the reality of the ecological destruction. These images reflect a global phenomenon. They are examples of the 21st century iconic image of urbanisation, an aerial photograph of excavated and bulldozed area of land, a site being prepared for construction, an image of destruction that is similar to the tar sands in Alberta. This is a marked contrast with the exciting iconic image of 20th century urbanisation: the skyscraper.
Ecologically destructive urban development in Istanbul also exacts a human cost. People are being displaced for the airport and other megaprojects – forced out of their homes by eminent domain, then dumped in new settlements on the periphery, far away from their livelihoods and social life in Istanbul, having to undertake long commutes for work and leisure.
The underlying agenda for the orgy of construction is opening up land for plunder, turning it into a financial and speculative asset, which facilitates the accumulation of capital. The megaprojects are in the process of “privatising and commercialising each and every urban space” and must be halted.
Suriname indigenous leaders protest airport expansion and land confiscation
Indigenous communities are protesting the expansion of Suriname’s international airport. The airport has obtained title to the neighbouring, indigenous land, and wants to expell most of the population of the Arawak villages Hollandse Kamp and Witsanti. Indigenous people reject the airport’s claim that they are the trespassers. They also protest against the airport’s dumping of untreated sewage into waterways that run through the two neigbouing Arawak villages.
Despite 500+ years of resistance, Indigenous people in Suriname are still not recognised as land owners. Suriname law doesn’t recognise collective land ownership at all. The state owns all land which is not individually owned. The government recently transfered ownership of the two indigenous villages to the state-owned International Airport of Suriname, without any consultation with the indigenous people who have lived there for generations.
For more information, contact http://www.vids.sr/
Press conference of chiefs, Hollandse Kamp, Suriname, 16 October 2015
Taoyuan Aerotropolis – residents demand formal hearings
The long struggle for justice for affected people facing displacement for Taoyuan Aerotropolis continues. Planned land expropriation for Taoyuan Aerotropolis would be the largest in the history of Taiwan, taking up 4,700 hectares of land, mostly consisting of prime agricultural land, about 3,200 hectares of this land would be expropriated and 46,000 people face eviction from their homes and farmland.
On 30th September, residents from the group Alliance Against Aerotropolis Forced Evictions protested at the Ministry of Transportation and Communications over their concerns that some people will be excluded from upcoming hearings regarding the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project, submitting petitions requesting permission that they be included. The first phase of Taoyuan Aerotropolis is a third runway at the airport, the necessity of which the protesters said must be reconsidered, and development immediately surrounding it. The second phase is development over a wider area. Owners of property scheduled to be expropriated for the project’s second phase have not been invited to attend. Alliance spokesperson Wang Pao-hsuan argued that they should be able to attend as their property is included in government plans and will be forbidden from building on their land if the project is approved.
Environmental Jurists Association director Thomas Chan said that plans for the aerotropolis should ‘start from scratch’ in the light of a new ruling on from the Council of Grand Justice, which found that land should only be expropriated for infrastructure projects. This is pertinent to the planned Taoyuan Aerotropolis, which includes industrial and business parks, plus residential districts.
Photo by Coulloud, Creative Commons License 
Photo by Coulloud, Creative Commons License
Photo by Coulloud, Creative Commons License
The 30th September demonstration is one of many protests against forcible land expropriation for the aerotropolis. On 11th March 2015, 300 people gathered outside government buildings in Taipei, capital city of Taiwan, demanding formal hearings .
Photo by Coulloud, Creative Commons License
As with so many of the endless protests by people facing eviction for Taoyuan Aerotropolis, the demonstrators met with a heavy police presence.
Photo by Coulloud, Creative Commons License
On 17th July 2014 residents facing displacement protested outside the Construction and Planning Agency in Taipei.
Photo by Coulloud, Creative Commons License
On 22nd June 2014 hundreds of protesters marched to Taoyuan County Hall demanding suspension of the aerotropolis project. 
Photo by Coulloud, Creative Commons License
antiaero.org 