Preparing Ports and Port Cities for Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaptation

Dr. Austin Becker. Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island. Ports city territories are at the front-line of climate change adaptation. In this article, Prof. Austin Becker briefly presents the challenges and how combining different approaches will be necessary to increase the resiliency of these coastal regions. Climate change may be the greatest environmental challenge that global society has ever faced. The AIVP has joined the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to commit to being a part of the solution. The first of AIVP’s 10 commitments is “adaptation to climate change.” Ports and cities can and must work together to anticipate the consequences of climate change on maritime and river port cities. Coastal communities around the world are up against a confluence of threats from sea level rise, intensifying storm events, and extreme precipitation, not to mention myriad other climate related issues. Overcoming the challenge requires a two-pronged approach: On the one hand, we must do all we can to reduce (or even reverse) global emissions so as to slow or stop the warming trend; on the other hand we must take proactive and aggressive measures to adapt to the new conditions that science suggests will be upon us in the coming decades. As a critical member of global society, maritime transportation and ports must be on the front lines of both prongs of the approach. But, ports and shipping cannot do it alone: They must partner with their host communities and other stakeholders to advance solutions. From the local to the global scale, society depends on maritime transport to enable life as we know it. More than 3,000 ports around the world serve as transfer points for energy products (coal, oil, and gas), manufactured goods, and raw materials. These include massive container ports (e.g., Rotterdam),…