Climate activists fill golf course holes with CEMENT in France

Climate activists fill golf course holes with CEMENT in protest against greens being exempt from water ban in France as it battles extreme drought

• Extinction Rebellion targeted courses in Vieille-Toulouse and Blagnac
• The group said golf was the ‘leisure industry of the most privileged’
• French residents are banned from watering their gardens or washing their cars in some areas, but the golf industry is except from the nation-wide water ban 

While nearly 100 French villages are short of drinking water, there’s one green space that isn’t exempt from the national water ban — golf courses.

But climate activists in France are making sure golfers still feel the pain, with a local branch of Extinction Rebellion filling up the golf holes in the city of Toulouse with cement. 

Extinction Rebellion targeted courses in the towns of Vieille-Toulouse and Blagnac.

The news comes amid warnings that almost half of EU land is currently under a drought warning or worse because of a combination of heatwaves and a persistent lack of rain.

Climate activists fill golf holes with cement after water ban exemption in Toulouse, France

The group called golf the ‘leisure industry of the most privileged’, according to the BBC, adding that ‘economic madness takes precedence over ecological reason’. 

Enforcement of the ban in France is at the discretion of regional officials. But one gold course has already diverged.

Under the water restrictions, French people cannot water their gardens or wash their cars in some areas.

Ille-et-Villaine in western France banned the watering of its golf courses, going against the exemption.

‘A golf course without a green is like an ice-rink without ice,’ Gérard Rougier of the French Golf Federation told the France Info news website.

France has declared a state of crisis after finding rainfall down by 85%.

The country is experienced its third-driest spring on record this year after 2011 and 1976, according to the national weather service, reported France24.

Golf courses can use up to 173 million litres of water per day during the summer months, according to US figures from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.

For comparison, the average household uses 349 litres per day, according to the UK’s Environmental Agency.

The abnormally dry conditions are creating a ‘tinder box’ for sparking fires, with parts of France increasingly at risk.

Wildfires are now blazing across the country’s southwest, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate from their homes. 

A climate activist sign reads: ‘This hole drinks 277,000 litres of water a day. Do you think that much?’

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