Traditionally, ports are designed for their primary economic function - to accommodate trade. Often the ecological and social aspects are not an integral part of the port design process, but are dealt with to a limited extent or at a later stage through mitigation and compensation measures. As a consequence opportunities to create added value may be missed. A growing consensus recognizes the need for sustainable port development, aimed at finding a balance between economic, ecological and social aspects. However, in practice, an integrated inter-disciplinary approach, which embraces all of these aspects, is missing. An international, collaborative research project was initiated to address this need, by developing an integrated framework for sustainable port design combining the engineering, economic, ecological and social aspects. In the Sustainable Ports project, a stakeholder-inclusive approach is followed to identify which ecosystem values and services are important to stakeholders. This paper focuses on the integrated, ecosystem-based approach to port design, which takes into account the identified ecosystem values and services. The expansion of port of Tema in Ghana, which is currently in the construction phase, serves as the case study.
An ecosystem-based port design aims to include ecosystems and the services they offer to human beings (e.g. ecosystem services) as an integral part of the design process from the early stages. In this way it aims to generate added value in terms of user functions such as food production, coastal protection, recreation and cultural heritage. Furthermore, ecosystem-based design can help to avoid failing to pass environmental impact assessment requirements - the “green handbrake” and, hence, create opportunities for a wider range of (port) developments. Based on literature research, project experience and interviews Slinger and Nava Guerrera (2016) distilled 11 criteria for ecosystem-based design, namely (1) continuity, (2) limited direct human disturbances, (3) endogeneity, (4) species population viability, (5) opportunity for threatened species, (6) trophic web integrity, (7) opportunities for ecological succession, (8) zone integrity, (9) characteristic (in)organic cycles, (10) characteristic physical-chemical water quality and (11) resilience. These criteria serve to provide ecological design principles that are then combined with the more common geophysical and engineering design principles (Slinger, 2016) for port design, such as accessibility, structural integrity, reliability and implementability. The ecological and engineering principles are sometimes conflicting and inherently require trade-offs in the design choices that are made with regard to port location, lay-out, structures and materials. However, our integrated ecosystem-based method shows that they can also be complementary and offer new opportunities for port developments.
In this paper we describe the results and lessons learnt on the case study of Tema port in Ghana. We demonstrate the identified trade-offs and the opportunities of ecosystem-based design following the above principles. Furthermore, we provide examples of the alternative design choices that could/can be made in moving from ecological compensation and mitigation to a more creative, ecosystem-based design approach. Next steps focus on how to evaluate and quantify the economic and social costs and benefits and how to account for future developments such as climate change and changing markets in ecosystem-based port design.
Why this presentation will be interesting/ useful for the conference attendees?
After this presentation the attendees will understand the importance and potential added value of an ecosystem-based approach, and consider taking this into account earlier in the design process. More potential win-win situations in port design can potentially result.
References
Slinger, J.H. (Jill) (2016) Engineering: Building with Nature 101x video #07 – Distilling Engineering Design Principles. TU Delft. Dataset. http://dx.doi.org/10.4121/uuid:f9099686-7dab-42ec-8da9-8cc961f393f3 (https://youtu.be/JhoRnfb5yS8 )
Slinger, J.H. (Jill); Nava Guerrero, G. d. C. (Graciela) (2016) Engineering: Building with Nature 101x video #08 – Distilling Ecological Design Principles. TU Delft. Dataset. http://dx.doi.org/10.4121/uuid:20576f6c-e439-4a79-abc4-ad13742c7b48 (https://youtu.be/SCK9j2FfwJg )