The Anti-Airport Movement Has Gone Global

The Anti-Airport Movement Has Gone Global
Demonstrators in Western France protest against a project to build an international airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes, Nov. 17, 2012 (AP photo by David Vincent).

On Oct. 14, just two weeks before the start of the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, an unusual organization commemorated its fifth anniversary: Stay Grounded. The group, founded in 2016, is an international activist network of more than 170 smaller protest movements from across the globe. Through “mutual support and exchange of experiences,” it hopes to inspire and guide collaboration around the shared goal that brings its members together—namely, reducing “aviation and its negative impacts.”

In the years since Stay Grounded started work, it has made a case for seeing anti-airport social movements as a truly global phenomenon. From Peru and Uganda to the United States and India, disparate groups of citizens have organized against the environmental and local impacts of airport land development. Stay Grounded’s research has so far investigated 80 airport-related conflicts and identified 300 more for further investigation.

So far, the struggle against airport projects is far from a unified one, but Stay Grounded and groups like it, including the Global Anti-Aerotropolis Movement and the U.K-based AirportWatch, are actively working to change that by building linkages between similar movements. What is notable is that they’ve displayed an ever-growing capacity to unite actors from across the political spectrum. The movement’s top-line, single goal—a moratorium on airport construction and expansion—is fueled by a comprehensive set of underlying motivations. Among other things, they seek to reduce or prevent air traffic, emissions from aviation, biodiversity loss and deforestation, noise pollution, real-estate and land devaluation, the displacement of Indigenous communities and the endangerment of archaeological sites. 

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
  • Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
  • The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
  • The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.