PCF Talk #51 – Agenda Monthly Meeting – Hybrid
This is a hybrid event, please join in person, or via the zoom link below!
I Public Event
9:00 - 9:15
Introduction of the Day: Erik de Maaker
9:15 - 10:15
Theme: Permitted Crime in the Port
Chair: Erik de Maaker (Leiden University, PCF)
Presenter: Lieselot Bisschop (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Lieselot Bisschop has a PhD in criminology and is Professor of Public and Private Interest. Her research focuses on understanding roles played by public and private actors, separately and interactively, in causing and governing environmental, corporate and organized crimes. Past studies have focused on e-waste trafficking and planned obsolescence of electronics; wildlife, gold and timber trafficking; shipbreaking by beaching; coastal land loss; drug smuggling via ports. Her current research focuses on industrial pollution by PFAS.
Title: Historical PFAS pollution as a state-facilitated corporate crime. Findings from a case study research about DuPont de Nemours/Chemours Dordrecht
Abstract: In 1961 DuPont’s researchers raised concerns about the potential health effects of exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA or C8), a heat-, water- and fat-resistant chemical which was discovered in the 1930s and used for many (consumer) products since then. The unbreakable bond meant it was persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic. In 1998, the discovery of PFAS contamination in Parkersburg (USA) led to Environmental Protection Agency investigations and yearslong judicial proceedings and public debate. Only in the last 8 years, and increasingly so in the last two, the pollution by forever chemicals emerged on the agenda in Europe, despite the presence of 20 PFAS production facilities and many more that use them. In this research we ask the question how the contamination emerged and how it was perpetuated. Case study research about the PFOA- and GenX pollution by DuPont de Nemours/Chemours (‘Dordrecht Works’) in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. This case study combines a historical analysis of industry and government documents starting in 1967, observations of public meetings and expert interviews with municipalities, inspectorates, regulators, public prosecutors, police, civil society organizations, drinking water companies, scientists, journalists and chemical industry representatives.
The emergence and perpetuation of chemical pollution by PFOA/Gen-X in and around the Dordrecht plant resulted from the intersection of political and economic actions and interests, therefore constituting a state-facilitated corporate crime. At the basis of the tardiness or even failure of governments to regulate PFAS emissions, lies a knowledge asymmetry between industry and regulators. Strategic behavior by companies challenged regulatory governance. Our study shows the long continuation of the contamination can be explained by, among others, fragmented regulation and legal challenges.
In preventing social harms like PFAS pollution from occurring again, learning from past cases is essential. This requires looking beyond specific instances when public and private interests colluded and looking at how those instances were shaped throughout time. This is essential in addressing the historic pollution by PFAS around the world.
10:15 - 10:30
Break
II PCF Community Engagement
10:30 - 11:15
Moderator: Erik de Maaker
Presenters: Kelly Shannon, Bruno De Meulder
Kelly Shannon is a professor of urbanism at KU Leuven, where she is program director of the Master of Human Settlements and Master of Urbanism, Landscape and Planning programs. Her research is at the intersection of landscape and urbanism and analysis and design. Most recently she has focused on design strategies in relation to the consequences of global warming. Since the 1990s, she has been involved in various design research projects in Vietnam, with a most recent focus on the HCMC and Mekong Delta regions.
Bruno De Meulder is a professor of urbanism at KU Leuven, where he is Vice Chair of the Department of Architecture. He has had a long-standing a focus on colonial and postcolonial urbanism, urban history and urban design projects that intertwine urban analysis and projection and engage with the social and ecological challenges that characterize contemporary times. He has been working in the Vietnamese context for several decades, primarily through design research consultancy projects for the Vietnamese government.
Title: A Socio-Ecological Turn for the Mekong Delta. Accentuating Indigenous Logics
Abstract: Worldwide, the consequences of global warming are becoming ever more apparent. From extended territories to cities to neighborhoods to rural hamlets, higher temperatures and more serve floods (and droughts) are wreaking havoc on settlements, productive landscapes, infrastructure, and health (of human and non-human species). In Vietnam, concurrent with the climate crisis are a cascade of other crises—socio-cultural, ecological, and spatial—that stem from its accelerating development boom. The tried-and-true system of master planning based on monofunctional land use planning, is incapable of responding adequately to the contemporary context. A paradigm shift, where ecology and landscape systems are the framework for urbanization, is needed. The presentation will focus on the Mekong Delta (in Vietnam and Cambodia) and design research that has been carried out there for over two decades. It will begin with a careful reading and interpretative mapping of landscape domestication over a longue durée of the ‘as found’ territory where nature was the structure ‘for people passing by’ with settlements embedded in the landscape. The underlying water management system, as well as the territory’s agroecological regions, by nature, traverse administrative boundaries and inherently link urban and rural metabolisms. Critically unravelling the subsequent modern times, it will expose the often-devastating effects of humankind’s structuring of nature, the engineering of flows and the hierarchical transformation of territories. In conclusion and turning to immediate history, it will plea for design research and bold visions to create neo-natural structures that re-capitalize on locational assets and create qualitative human-non-human relationships.
11:15 - 11:30
Break
III PCF lighthouse projects and new opportunities
11:30 - 12:00
Vincent Baptist
“Open Map Meeting” event announcement
Vincent Baptist
Blog updates
Yi Kwan Chan & Maurice Jansen
Resilient Delta Grant: Cultural Resilience in the Port-City of Rotterdam
Paolo De Martino & John Hanna
Resilient Delta Grant: Living with Water: Exploring the role of Small Ports of the Dutch Delta
Carola Hein & Mina Akhavan
PACT – COST Action
Mina Akhavan
Symposium (26-27 September 2024): (Re-) Connecting Maritime-Urban Ecosystems. A Framework for Planning and Designing Sustainable ‘Spaces of Flows’ in Port-City Regions