Post-Olympics Analysis of the Surfing Dispute in Tahiti over Environmental Degradation and Colonial Impact
Sustainability has been a new driving initiative for the Olympics, but recent analysis on the impacts of sports tourism on the environment raises questions about the efficacy of attempts to achieve these goals. Prior to the 2024 Olympics, discourse surfaced about the environmental and colonial concerns surrounding the Tahitian Surfing venue. The debate on sustainability with an emphasis on the surfing venue has mainly focused on the local community’s stance against what can be described as a post-colonial international extraction, the recomposition of the naturally structured environment, and the Olympics’ lasting impact on top of climate change in the region.
The 2024 Olympics surfing competition venue was held on the land of Teahupo'o, Tahiti. The island is a part of French Polynesia, which is an autonomous territory of France with its own assembly, president, budget and laws. The island is marred by a history of colonization as a result of historical resource and cultural extraction and the 2013 status of French Polynesia as a Non-Self-Governing Territory by UN standards. French Polynesia’s history of phosphate extraction on the island of Makatea was only a small piece of the colonial puzzle. The main form of extraction was historical–the extraction of a stable culture replaced by a story of untouched land, designed to be a fantasy escape away from industrialization. The largest export in French Polynesia, largely from Tahiti, was the export of illusion. In 2023, there were over 300,000 visitors to Tahiti alone with 30 percent of visitors from France. A newly formed idea of a ‘dream land’ gave way for French colonial action to take advantage of numerous economic and political opportunities in the region.
The region has been a popular venue for other surfing events hosted by the World Surf League (WSL) given its landscape of rough corals that create underwater turbulence and small whirlpools that result in strong waves. Not only is the island composed of the ideal conditions for surfing, but the sport also holds cultural importance for indigenous Tahitians. Natural land and sea is considered as cultural heritage in Tahiti, and therefore a destruction of any natural processes is taken as a destruction of their culture. Any touristic means of production or development that harms the land or waves can therefore be interpreted as acts of colonial impact.
Tahiti’s colonial history highlights how subjugation has been inherent to the way the islanders earn money and sustain a role in the international market. The main village of the Olympics site has a regular population of approximately 1,500 people, of whom most work in the tourism industry. Although the majority of the economy is tourism dependent, there are also economic and social factors that distinguish the motivations of those in the tourism industry. Foreign investments in infrastructure on overseas territories, like Tahiti, are often financed by foreign capital, often by the former colonizers of the land. These investments also create a vacuum in which 55 percent of the tourist income of nations like Tahiti is transferred outward to other nations. This investment vacuum is a result of the industry requiring support from other nations to make the industry flow and sustain growth over time. Tahiti’s colonial history is important to a discussion of the sports tourism’s impact on the island of Tahiti given the historical depiction of power dynamics and economic freedom. People who are native to the island are not responsible for the desires of a colonial power, especially since these actions merely seem to be using a native sport to incentivize tourism in the Olympics season.
The main controversy of this year’s competition focused around the construction of a new Tahitian judging stand in the lagoon of Teahupo'o. In April 2024, a final reveal of a new updated stand shifted the discourse from various adversaries who initially opposed the project to compromise with a less damaging tower. The president of French Polynesian indigenous social activism group Association for the Defence of Fenua 'aiherei, stated that “the controversy is completely over.” Although the concept of the new stand was an updated version of the original design, it previously did not meet safety requirements, so the plan called for a new three-story tower holding 40 people– five times the size of the initially planned structure. With new amenities and spaces, the tower also sought to include piping for bathrooms and other water sources. Not only would the construction of the tower damage the reef's corals, but the lack of reef could damage the future of the natural wave conditions. In some cases reefs can grow back, but if the damage is rapid enough, like in this case, damage could create irreversible changes to the structure of the reef. According to marine biologist and conservationist Bethany Augliere, damaging or changing the Tahitian reef structure could also increase algae which produce neurotoxins that contaminate fish that are consumed by locals. This would impact the local fishing economy and possibly lead to a serious public health crisis with spread of illness.
The construction on the natural structure and land, referred to by environmental scientists as the “geomorphology” of the reefs, would not only create a system that eventually leads to the loss of land, but would be destructive to current coral reefs. Various local environmental protection groups were against the plan for construction and argued that the new stand and pipework would scar the reef in a way that could take years to repair. In September 2023, Olympic organizers set a budget of $5 million, but within a month locals created petitions to stop the project. Instead of completely discarding the idea, though, Olympic organizers pitched a new, smaller tower–even though it still would be disturbing the geomorphic processes.
Presently, the new judging stand is deconstructable, however its construction solely for the competition raises ongoing ethical concerns. Tourism development has impacted the land of isolated islands like French Polynesia since the inter-war period. The physical construction for tourism has led changes to the geomorphology which overall degrade the local land. The more it is analyzed, the more this type of construction appears to be a form of resource extraction by taking attractive land for tourism and using it until the land is irreversibly destroyed.
The impact on the local land is not only a form of colonial intervention and causes physical destruction, but it represents a long lasting contribution to climate change. The French coastline didn’t have the waves to suffice for the Olympics during that time of the year, but this land disturbance entails the stress of continuing climate change on top of an ecosystem that is already at risk. With possibilities of large-scale coral bleaching and other major catastrophic events that are very likely given recent climate events in the region, this island is now at extreme risk, and the recent construction project placed even more risk on land that is already the subject of environmental advocacy. Oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam, a researcher at Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, affirmed that the feasibility of any mitigation measures are questionable given the precedent that has been set by allowing the new stand to be built. With coral growing only one centimeter per year, the possibility of the land to regrow at the current rate of destruction is near impossible–no matter the sustainability efforts by those on the Olympic committee.
Research participation in Tahiti has broadened to the scope of local community members actively engaging in local conservation activities. In 2023, 12 locals who specialized in fishery, photography, surfing, and various jobs, trained to learn 3D photogrammetry techniques, overlaying photos to create 3D models, to determine the changes in their land's ecology and reef systems prior to the 2024 Olympics. The 3D photogrammetry project included taking various angled photos to create the 3D models to visualize the current status of the reefs for future comparison. Projects like these highlight the importance of including the local Polynesian community in climate discourse, and thus giving them a voice in consequential decisions made about their land, and in turn, their waves.