Taking Off, but Leaving a Lasting Mark: Airport Construction's Environmental Legacy
Authorities in London plan a third runway at the Heathrow Airport, allowing for an estimated capacity of around seven hundred and forty thousand flights per year, an increase from the current limit of four hundred and eighty thousand flights with the existing runways, leading to an additional seven hundred extra flights daily.
Authorities in Istanbul opened the city's third airport in 2019, with the exercise allowing 76 million passengers, making it the second-busiest airport in Europe and the second busiest in the Middle East, serving more than 58 million international travellers, the sixth busiest airport in the world for international traffic.
The authorities in Malaysia built the third runway of Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 2014, soon making it the 35th busiest airport in the world by total passenger traffic, the edifice handling 36.1 million passengers in 2023, accounting for 36 percent of Malaysia's passenger traffic.
However, the situation with an Australian airport brings the Kuala Lumpur, Heathrow, and Istanbul airports to mind, when a court fined a farmer a record one million dollars for wiping out a critical koala habitat for a private airstrip larger than the Sydney airport.
At Heathrow, the runway expansion will affect 49 wildlife sites within five kilometers of the area, leading to the loss of 35 hectares of woodland, threatening the population of the valuable pennyroyal, a naturally scarce relative of mint, and affect 13 kilometers of River Colne, a river with more than 15 fish species.
At the Istanbul Airport, the construction of the installation destroyed 76 square kilometers of forests, lakes, and farmlands, impacted 300 bird species, including the rare raptors and spotted eagles, disrupting the flight pattern of 400,000 storks every spring and another 200,000 raptors every autumn, a flight pattern dating tens of thousands of years.
In Hong Kong, the airport construction of a third runway led to the disappearance of 650 hectares of the ocean, the home to the Chinese white Dolphins, as well as leading to the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide and air pollutants, increasing from four percent aviation's contributions to Hong Kong's carbon emissions.
In general, airports like the Istanbul, Heathrow, Hong Kong, and the others lead to the loss of pristine hectares of woodland, threaten the population of plants such as the pennyroyal, damage lakes and farmlands, impact negatively on bird species, take over parts of the ocean, and lead to large amounts of carbon emissions and air pollutants.
According to recent data, the global aviation industry, including airports, contributes as much as 2.5 percent of initial carbon dioxide emissions, with the 20 top most polluting airports producing the equivalent emissions of 58 coal plants, with estimates suggesting a potential 300 percent increase over 2005 levels by 2050 if business continues as usual in the flying sector.
In another development, the construction of edifices such as the Istanbul Airport in about 48 percent of cases analyzed obliterated wildlife habitats and biodiversity, with 41 percent involving deforestation impacts, and 32 percent related to the loss of biodiversity, not mentioning land dispossession at 50 percent and land displacement at 47 percent.
Furthermore, the construction or expansion of airports leads to endangered migratory birds to be in a collision course with the projects, such as the construction of the Manila International Airport, on course to displacing at least 12 endangered and threatened bird species, including the black-faced spoonbill, as well as disrupting the flight pattern of more than 50 million bird waterbirds that travel through the Philippines by the East Asian flyway, one of the world's biggest migratory bird flight paths.
In essence, the construction of airports not only accelerates deforestation but also worsens the emission of greenhouse gases, a phenomenon increasing with the construction going on at Heathrow, Istanbul, Hong Kong, and other airports.
Authorities in Australia made a good point in sanctioning the farmer, but others could make the same point by engaging with local communities and stakeholders to address environmental concerns of airports, promoting the use of alternative fuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and incorporate green infrastructure, such as green roofs, rain gardens, and solar panels, into airport design to reduce environmental impacts.
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