Multidisciplinary teams of professionals, with an objective and qualified vision, are those who bring the right balance for the sustainability of a project.
It is quite common to confuse the term sustainability -o sustainability- with everything that has a colour similar to «green». However, they are not directly related, contrary to what some argue. If we stick to the most common definition of the term, sustainability is a quality of development that ensures the needs of the present without putting resources at risk for future generations.
In essence, sustainability is a compromised way of thinking. It signifies a responsibility taken on by the person themselves, by the employer, by the worker, by the entity or by the collective, to create present and future well-being by properly managing all available assets. To decimate a resource, whatever it may be, is never a good idea.
And this is totally applicable to airports.
An aerodrome is usually spread over several hundred hectares, employs several thousand people, serves several hundred thousand passengers, and houses a few hundred self-employed people and businesses of all kinds. They are drivers of prosperity and development for any region where they are located.
On the other hand, there are some externalities impacts, which include noise-related issues, pollution caused by aircraft and vehicles, the construction of buildings, traffic generation and even, taken to the extreme, geomorphological changes to the site and its surroundings.
In life, Common sense is usually characterised by balance. And it is precisely this quality that must guide any decision taken in the development of an airport project, whilst weighing up all aspects of the debate, not just those that are of interest to one party or another. In the same vein, imposing criteria is not usually a good idea either.
From the moment the idea to create or expand an airport is born, through to the development of daily management once it's fully operational, It is essential to have a sustainability strategy in place. In every single action, from the most significant to the most insignificant, that desired balance must be weighed between the benefits it brings and the negative impacts it generates. And not only that, it must be foreseen how they will evolve and how they will interact those impacts over time.
There are three dimensions we must consider when developing a sustainability strategy: the economic dimension, the social dimension and the environmental dimension. Which is the most important? All three.
There is a fourth dimension which tends to distort the balance between the others: politics. This group includes the affections of the oligarchy, the interests of the «markets» (read financial powers), and the attachments of anti-system elements. All of these tend to be very far from balance and very close to their own interests.
It had been a while since there had been so many large airport projects underway simultaneously. Istanbul, Mexico City, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Jeddah, Rio de Janeiro and Dubai are examples of large-scale projects that are obliged to act in line with sustainable development. Unfortunately, they will not meet the same criteria, as each of the countries in which they are being implemented has different perspectives (and levels of flexibility) regarding the meaning of the term ‘sustainability’. The targets differ in each case.
That is precisely why it is particularly valuable to have the expert opinion from multidisciplinary teams of professionals who, with knowledge and experience, can bring objectivity to the debate on the sustainability of each of the actions contemplated in a project. And it is that equanimity that can guarantee that balance may it always be with us.
At the end of the day, as we said at the start, it is a question of being honest with future generations.
And of course, if you hear a politician use the term «sustainable development», run a mile – because it’s bound to have nothing to do with what we’ve discussed in this post.
