A global campaign urging the owners of Bristol Airport to drop its expansion plans has been launched. The Bristol Airport is Big Enough (BABE) group is the start of a new group, which is working with other communities around the world also suffering from the impact of airports owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP).
The plan is for affected communities to join together and demand that OTPP, which owns the Bristol travel hub, withdraw its expansion plans for airports across the globe. The move comes after Bristol Airport was given the green light to expand its capacity from 10 to 12 million passengers a year at appeal, reports Somerset Live.
North Somerset Council refused the expansion in 2020 following 8,900 public objections, citing the impact on the climate, green belt and residents’ health and the pressure on the local infrastructure. The expansion was also opposed by Bristol City Council, Bath and North East Somerset Council and the West of England Combined Authority.
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The airport appealed, with an inquiry being held last year and a decision announced in February. A spokesman for BABE said: “We unite to demand that the OTPP call on their airports to retract all expansion plans. We have no intention of letting up our resistance.”
The group has also written a letter to OTPP CEO Jo Taylor highlighting the ‘global consequences’ of its expansion plans.
It also warns that the plans are not ‘climate compatible’ and pose health risks to local communities and that the continued drive to expand airports was a ‘risky’ addition to the pension fund's investment portfolio. In the open letter, it said: ”Thousands of people have opposed Bristol Airport expansion alone as well as the local council and many public bodies.
“The situation is similar for communities around London City, Copenhagen, Birmingham and Brussels. Our opposition is wholly supported by health statistics which increasingly point to the damaging health consequences of noise and air pollution.
“As communities local to these airports we already face higher health risks than most. We are not willing to further exacerbate our exposure to this pollution.”
