The Port of Rotterdam is a place of scale, speed and global connections. At the same time, it is an area where major social issues converge: energy, health, labour and justice. Within Resilient Delta, Vinzenz Bäumer Escobar focuses precisely on this convergence of issues. As Academic Lead Port, he connects research, policy and practice around the question of how ports can be structurally reorganised in light of ecological limits and growing social inequality, enabling them to contribute to a sustainable and just society.

Vinzenz trained as an anthropologist and works as a researcher at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, within the Department of History. Before becoming involved with Resilient Delta, he spent several years conducting qualitative research in and around the port of Rotterdam. He spoke with port workers, residents and policymakers and worked on site himself. That experience shaped his view of the port as a social and political system, not just a logistics hub.

Within Resilient Delta, Vinzenz fulfils a clear bridging function. He closely follows developments in the port area and maintains contacts with researchers from various universities and with parties such as municipalities, social organisations and the port authority. His work revolves around matchmaking and community building: bringing together people, perspectives and knowledge around specific issues.

From damage to recovery

One of the projects Vinzenz is intensively involved in is From damage to recovery. This initiative, led by criminologists Lieselot Bisschop and Karin van Wingerde, focuses on the long history of industrial pollution in the Netherlands, with the port of Rotterdam as an important case study. Decades of industrial activity have led to soil, water and air pollution, often with long-term and difficult-to-see health effects for local residents.

The project focuses not only on the environmental damage, but also on how it is dealt with by the authorities and society. For a long time, citizens have had little involvement in decision-making, even though they bear the consequences. With the support of Resilient Delta, work is underway to set up a programme that focuses on recognition, dialogue and recovery, together with parties such as the Municipal Health Service (GGD) and the Victim Support Fund.

Technology is not enough

Discussions about the port often focus on technological solutions: electrification, digitisation and new energy carriers such as hydrogen. These developments also play a role within Resilient Delta, but Vinzenz deliberately places them in a broader perspective. He cites hydrogen in particular as an example of a solution that appears attractive from a technical perspective, but at the same time raises new ethical and social questions about costs, energy consumption and global inequality.

For Vinzenz, the energy transition in the port is not purely a technical issue. It is also about who benefits from new infrastructure, who bears the costs and what this means for labour, health and the relationship between the city and the port.

Port, knowledge and cooperation

This broader perspective is also reflected in initiatives such as the UPT Haven Symposium, where Resilient Delta was involved in facilitating knowledge exchange between academia, policy and practice. Within this process, Larissa van der Lugt, member of the Resilient Delta Port steering group, plays a central role as organiser and connector.

International perspectives: Morocco

Vinzenz also seeks ways to break down existing frameworks internationally. One example is the workshop Creating a Vision for Port Cities: Morocco Edition, organised within the Port City Futures network by Carola Hein and Annabel Duval. In this workshop, professionals from various port cities worked together on tools for a fair and sustainable port transition.

By confronting participants with a different context, such as the port of Tangier, space is created to question assumptions that are taken for granted in Rotterdam. The focus was not only on technological solutions, but also on the relationship between port and city, climate justice and integrated approaches to transition. The workshop series will be continued in the Netherlands and later again in Morocco. It is precisely through comparisons that alternative development paths emerge that do not revolve exclusively around economies of scale and competitiveness.

Stories from the port

In addition to policy and research projects, Vinzenz is involved in the book ‘My Port City‘ containing qualitative interviews about people’s experiences of the port, initiated by Yi Kwan Chan and Maurice Jansen. In this project, people with varying connections to the port — from port workers to city residents — talk about how they experience the distance between the city and the port.

The book shows how strongly the port is still interwoven with Rotterdam’s identity, but also where alienation arises. More information about this project and its further development will follow at a later date.

Citizen Science and the living environment

Resilient Delta also plays a role in the area of the living environment and health, for example through the Noise Lab. In this partnership, the local council, researchers and residents work together on issues relating to noise pollution in port areas. Citizen Science is an important starting point in this regard.

Residents play an active role in collecting measurement data on noise and, in follow-up projects, also on air quality. These local measurements provide detailed insight into nuisance and can be linked to existing measurement networks of government bodies and knowledge institutions. In this way, residents contribute directly to knowledge that is relevant to policy and decision-making, and the production of knowledge shifts partly from institutions to communities themselves.

Space for uncomfortable questions

What Vinzenz wants to achieve with his work at Resilient Delta is not a single, clear-cut answer. He sees Resilient Delta primarily as a place where uncomfortable questions can be asked (about justice, power and responsibility) and where science, policy and society can come together.

According to Vinzenz, this space is where the power of transdisciplinary collaboration lies. Not as a promise of consensus, but as a joint search for a future-proof port, right at the heart of society.