What Audubon and GEO Certification Actually Require

Audubon and GEO get mentioned together often enough that people assume they are the same thing. They are not. One is a US-originated programme built around on-course habitat and documented practice. The other is an international sustainability standard with a wider scope and an audit. A course can hold both, and a number across our portfolio do.

Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary

Run by Audubon International, which is a separate organisation from the National Audubon Society. A course registers, then works through six areas and documents what it does in each.

• Environmental planningA written plan covering the whole property, including the parts that are not in play.
• Wildlife and habitat managementInventory of what lives there, then measures to protect and extend it. Out-of-play areas, native plantings, nesting structures, corridors between habitat patches.
• Chemical use reduction and safetyRecord keeping, justification for applications, storage and handling.
• Water conservationIrrigation efficiency, measured use, reduction over time.
• Water quality managementTesting of water leaving the property, buffer strips around water features.
• Outreach and educationMembers, staff and the surrounding community told what the course is doing and why.

Certification requires documented evidence in each area and is maintained through periodic recertification, so it is a standing commitment rather than a one-off award. Signature status, which applies to courses certified from the design stage onward, is a higher bar again.

GEO Certified

Run by the GEO Foundation, international in scope, and structured around an independently verified assessment rather than self-documented practice. The scope is wider than habitat: nature, water, energy, supply chain, pollution control and community are all in it, and the social and procurement elements have no real Audubon equivalent.

Because it is independently verified and covers the operation rather than just the course, GEO tends to be the one that satisfies corporate and tournament sustainability requirements. It is also the heavier lift, because it reaches into purchasing, energy and employment practice.

What it costs to keep

The fees are modest. The real cost is staff time: somebody has to own the record keeping, and the record keeping does not stop. Water tested on schedule, applications logged, habitat work documented, outreach actually done. Courses that treat certification as a plaque lose it at recertification. Courses that treat it as an operating discipline usually find the discipline pays for itself in reduced inputs.

The work is also much cheaper to build in at design stage than to retrofit. Buffer strips, out-of-play habitat, irrigation zoning and water capture are nearly free decisions on a drawing and expensive ones on a finished course.

Why it is worth doing beyond the environmental case

Three commercial reasons, in rough order of how often they actually decide something.

• Water securityIn a growing number of markets, abstraction is capped or contested. A course with documented, measured, reducing water use is in a far better position when allocations are reviewed.
• Planning and permittingA developer with a certified track record gets a different hearing than one without.
• Tournament and corporate requirementsSustainability criteria increasingly appear in host venue selection and in corporate event procurement.

Across the portfolio

Courses certified or recognised under these programmes include Jockey Club Kau Sai Chau in Hong Kong, which holds both Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status and GEO certification, Suzhou Jinji Lake in China, TPC at Jasna Polana, which has taken national Environmental Leaders in Golf awards, and Saadiyat Beach in Abu Dhabi, which holds an Audubon International certificate for wildlife and habitat management.

Environmental sensitivity, playability and sustainability lead the way on our projects because they are cheaper, easier and more durable when they lead. Talk to us about a project.