Port leads a sea change among European cities

Ahmed Aboutaleb is overseeing big changes as mayor of Rotterdam, bidding to go green and challenging its petrochemical proprietors, writes Europe Correspondent Ann Cahill

THE citizens of Rotterdam have a habit of turning adversity into opportunity — they did it after the Second World War when the Nazis bombed the city to nothing, growing its port to become the biggest in the world.

Now its very existence is under threat as climate change threatens to swamp its inhabitants, with 80% of the region as much as 7m below sea level, making evacuation impossible.

They are once again fighting back, not just to overcome the challenge of the rising sea and increasing rain, but to develop survival strategies to sell to the rest of the world.

Firmly at the helm of this gigantic challenge is Ahmed Aboutaleb, the city’s mayor for the past seven years. In a country where some politicians are synonymous with xenophobia, it is in some way fitting that Rotterdam’s first citizen insists on wearing his challenge as a privilege.

Not just a Muslim but the holder of Moroccan and Dutch passports, he addressed his citizens in French after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, telling them that “We are all Charlie now”. He followed it up by advising his fellow migrants to leave if they were unwilling to follow the laws and constitution of the country he came to with his family as a 15 year old, describing himself as different and desperately anxious to learn.

Leading a city of 174 nationalities — he describes himself as “a small Ban Ki-moon”, referring to the UN’s secretary general — he reminds his people they are in effect all migrants, with the first citizens coming from Brabant and Zeeland to claim the land from the sea.

Netherlands’ second city, it is the world’s sixth largest port, and Europe’s biggest, handling much of the continent’s imports and exports.

It is among the ten most vulnerable cities in the world — and not just because of the fear of rising seas. Drought is also forecast, with implications for drinking water and agriculture, its hinterland’s other big industry.

The city grew from industrious Dutch farmers reclaiming land from the sea centuries ago, and the much expanded area depends on dams, dikes, and barriers to keep it safe from the North Sea.

As the citizens rebuilt after the war, which left few of its buildings intact — apart from the beautiful city hall and the New York Hotel, from which migrants sailed to the New World — they were hit a devastating blow by mother nature. In 1953 water broke through, claiming the lives of more than 1,800 people.

There is nothing to suggest such a catastrophe would recur, as the buildings soar skywards, and the gleaming stainless steel of huge factories stretch for kilometre after kilometre along the banks of the Meuse as it opens to the North Sea.

However, some of its biggest earners are among the biggest climate-change culprits, such as the petrochemical industry and the coal-fired power plants on which that industry relies. It has five oil refineries — the biggest in the world — 45 chemical companies, and several electricity generating plants.

Constantly in competition with Chinese ports — to which it lost its world crown some years ago — it has created one of the deepest harbours, capable of taking the world’s largest vessels. It is currently home to the world’s biggest cargo ship, owned by a Dutch company but destined to roam the seas, replacing many smaller vessels.

But it is shedding workers, replacing them with an army of huge cranes operated by a single person with a joystick watching on a screen kilometres away.

The port still employs about 100,000 people, with an estimated 250,000 jobs linked to the port, according to the mayor. Its inland waterway through the Rhine and Meuse allows thousands of barges to ply their way with goods to France, Germany, and northern Italy, while rail carries to Spain and Poland.

“It’s easier for goods to come from China to Rotterdam and on to Italy than for them to be delivered directly to Italian ports,” said Aboutaleb.

The port is owned by the city and run by an independent agency. “Politicians are not the ones to run a port, including a mayor,” he said.

Part of the evolution from spewing carbon into the air is to create oxygen for the city and so a massive project of redeveloping an area with 33,000 houses is under way, with some being demolished to create green areas.

The plans do not mean the end of Rotterdam’s current industry either, with the Dutch-owned Shell investing billions into modernising its production plants, using diesel to create more eco-friendly fuels as industry moves towards biofuels.

Aboutaleb said: “The city is in transition. We are preparing for the next economy with less or no carbon and by 2050 this city will not use any energy, but produce it. We have a brilliant future, reusing heat and water from the industry, enough to provide sufficient 45,000 houses under construction, and we are working on a €5bn project that will provide the cities of Leiden, Delft, The Hague, and Rotterdam with carbon-free energy.”

The port is working with a collection of scientists and engineers, as well as sociologists to rethink the whole concept of change, he said.

But the future does not include restoring the jobs that moved to Asia and other places. It will be possible, in just three years, to print your suit rather than import it from Hong Kong, or custom-design the most popular form of Dutch transport — the bicycle — and then print it.

“This is not a joke, it is the reality, but what does this mean for ports, shipping companies?” said Aboutaleb. “We will rethink all of that and the city of Rotterdam will be in the lead, bringing the dangers to be considered and also the opportunities.”

There is of course a social chapter to all of this: Keeping peace among the 174 cultures and making sure they play their role; ensuring the success of a massive programme of improved quality schools, urban renewal, house repairs, and better integration to raise the quality of life and reduce the crime rate in the city’s southside, Zuid.

“We must create a sustainable economy with more wealth for the citizens,” said Aboutaleb.

The future of Rotterdam and other such cities are as the workhorses of the EU. “The European Commission and the European Parliament must realise that the future is in the hands of cities and as national governments decline, the city governments will become more important in shaping Europe.”

The forecasted droughts are just as big a challenge as rising seas, said Aboutaleb, but the Dutch farmers are rising to the challenge by producing food with 5l of water compared to 70l and 80l in other parts of the world. As Europe’s biggest exporter of food per capita, agriculture is as important to the economy as it is to feeding an expanding global population.