Airport Plan a 'Potential Threat' to Ogasawara World Heritage Site

May 2, 2018

TOKYO -- The international body in charge of recommending natural World Heritage site designation views a plan to build an airport on the nature-rich Ogasawara Islands as a "potential threat," the Mainichi has learned.

The islands were placed on the World Heritage List as a natural heritage in 2011, becoming a site requiring special conservation measures. However the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the village government of Ogasawara have a plan to build an airport outside the designated site on Chichijima island in the archipelago, citing local demand for better transportation to and from the remote islands some 1,000 kilometers south of central Tokyo.

The metropolitan government has even chosen a candidate site -- a former Imperial Japanese Navy airstrip located on the western side of the island. A plan calls for the construction of a 1,200-meter new strip on top of landfill placed on the old one and the introduction of flights that would connect the capital and the island in two and a half hours.

Read more: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180502/p2a/00m/0na/028000c