Terra Potentia: The World-making Force of Dredging
Dredge boat at work. Photo by Kelly, 2022. Free to use from www.pexels.com.
Dredging is a kind of work that surely must be done. — From a worker’s poem, probably late 19th century.
Homo sapiens… may be the premier geomorphic agent of our time. — Roger Hooke, geomorphologist, 1994: 225.
As ports across the world deepen their harbors to accommodate ever-larger oceangoing ships, dredging is assuming a more prominent role in coastal environmental management and policy. First, the project investigates how dredging firms and state entities develop technologies, analytical techniques, financial mechanisms, and capital to accomplish harbor deepening projects and ship channel expansions. Second, we examine four case studies across the European Union and the United States to evaluate the role of dredging in producing situated environmental transformations in coastal and riverine landscapes. Drawing on a mixed-methods incorporating qualitative and geospatial approaches, we approach dredging as an economic and technical practice that connects the demands of port and maritime development with changing landscapes and waterscapes in and around major ports. The project will contribute the first multi-sited case study of the economic geography and political ecology of dredging and sediment movement. The project will reveal how the technical, political and economic process of dredging produces environmental change and impacts natural resources and human communities.
- Project title: Terra Potentia: The World-making Force of Dredging
- Project leader (PI): Henrik Ernstson (KTH Environmental Science Department, aka SEED)
- Project participants (Co-I): Joshua Lewis, Tulane University; Ashley Carse, Vanderbilt University, and Jonas Hein, IDOS Germany.
- Participating institutions: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Tulane University, Vanderbilt University
- Financing: VR, The Swedish Research Council.
- Project period: 2024-01-01 – 2026-12-31, could be extended to 2027.
Webpage at KTH, go here.
Project description
The Terra Potentia project examines the little studied but profoundly transformative phenomenon of navigation dredging. As ports across the world deepen their harbors to accommodate ever-larger oceangoing ships, dredging is assuming a more prominent role in coastal environmental management and policy. First, the project investigates how dredging firms and state entities develop technologies, analytical techniques, financial mechanisms, and capital to accomplish harbor deepening projects and ship channel expansions. Second, we examine four case studies across the European Union and the United States to evaluate the role of dredging in producing situated environmental transformations in coastal and riverine landscapes. The case studies include regionally important port-cities Luleå in Sweden, Hamburg in Germany, and Savannah and ports along the US Gulf coast (including New Orleans). Drawing on a mixed-methods incorporating qualitative and geospatial approaches, we approach dredging as an economic and technical practice that connects the demands of port and maritime development with changing landscapes and waterscapes in and around major ports. The project will contribute the first multi-sited case study of the economic geography and political ecology of dredging and sediment movement. The project will reveal how the technical, political and economic process of dredging produces environmental change and impacts natural resources and human communities. The project is inspired by theoretical discussions in geography, ecology, and anthropology, to analyze the political ecology and political geology of navigation dredging.
The Terra Potentia project’s organization.
The overarching purpose of the project is to develop a critical, interdisciplinary understanding of dredging as a core activity supporting the contemporary global economy. Merging insights from geography, anthropology, science and technology studies, and environmental history, the research will explore how the port-dredging nexus facilitates three linked domains of global economic development: trade, energy, and urbanisation. As an empirical topic and analytical lens, dredging illuminates (green and blue) innovation and (grey and brown) continuity in capitalist societies. While dredging has been part of the expansion of market-based economic relations for centuries, it has received surprisingly little attention in the critical social sciences and humanities. Given this, the project makes two key contributions: First, we will advance a nascent cross-disciplinary conversation on dredging. Second, we will develop a broader political ecology analysis of the implications of sediment management in the Anthropocene. This will be–as far as we know–the first major research project to develop this type of social scientific framework for this strata of the world economy.
There are three specific aims of the project. First, we will develop a historical and geographical analysis of “dredge capital,” reconstructing the development of the global dredging industry, assessing its firms, fleets, contractual commitments/clients, and the geological transformations it has driven. Second, we will develop four in-depth case studies of “port-dredging nexuses” in Europe and the United States. Representing the largest time commitment, this aim focuses on dredging as an engine of situated socio-environmental change and contradiction. Ports are important nodes for understanding the operations of the global economy. Connected to transnational infrastructural networks and bound up with the specificities of place, our case studies highlight how dredging makes foundational industrial activities and capital accumulation possible: the container-oriented logistical port of Savannah, USA; the established multimodal port of Hamburg, Germany; the “green industrialization” port of Luleå, Sweden; and oil and gas extraction intensification in US Gulf Coast ports. Third, we seek to synthesise and develop geographical and anthropological theory to conceptualise dredging as a world-making force–a key driver of terra potentia.
Photos of Dredge Capital – From Archives and Field Work
Below follows photos from archival work and field work in Sweden, Germany, USA, and The Netherlands. Photos are by the research team and should not be reproduced before letting us know. Contact Prof Henrik Ernstson at KTH for permission to reproduce.
Willows, machines, and labour
Early example of dredging and maritime contract work. Notice willow fascine mattresses in the foreground. The image illustrates what the project calls, dredge capital, the mobilization and combination of machines, labour, and ecological materials to produce environmental change to make maritime spaces and volumes for industrial expansion and coastal protection. This terraqueos activity is often carried out by private firms with the aim to earn profits, which in turn can be reinvested in new machines and new projects. Projects are often funded by States and public and port authorities via contracts to private firms or state-owned companies. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Publikszentrum Water, Rotterdam, May 2022.
The weaving of willow fascine mattresses which is sunk to the river bottom to stabilize river beds and sediments. The export of willow fascine mattresses and the technique to produce them is an early example of how Dutch and Belgium dredge companies emerged and grew with customers across Europe’s river and port cities, and via European colonization and trade in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Publikszentrum Water, Rotterdam, May 2022.
Mechanization of dredging. The dark plume of pollution in this historical photo also demonstrates the dependence on fossil energy to scale and increase the capacity, strenght, and effeciency of dredge capital. Machines also took over labour intensive tasks. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Publikszentrum Water, Rotterdam, May 2022.
A bucket dredger from the company BOS & KALIS, today Boskalis, lying idle in the bay with a rowing worker approaching. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Publikszentrum Water, Rotterdam, May 2022.
Manual labour to in the midst of a big machine. Two male workers and a chunk of harder sediment or rock on a bucket dredger. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Publikszentrum Water, Rotterdam, May 2022.
Machine evolution: the development of dredge boats
Early example of a horse-powered bucket dredge boat. Notice the horse pulling the bucket chain. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Nationaal Baggermuseum, Sliedrecht, The Netherlands, May 2022.
Machine-powered bucket dredge boat. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Nationaal Baggermuseum, Sliedrecht, The Netherlands, May 2022.
Contemporary and massive dredge boat. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Nationaal Baggermuseum, Sliedrecht, The Netherlands, May 2022.
Computerized dredge boat. Photo by Henrik Ernstson of collections at Nationaal Baggermuseum, Sliedrecht, The Netherlands, May 2022.
Participating in “The International Symposium: The 150 Year New Waterway,” Rotterdam, Oct 13, 2022.
Joshua Lewis (standing to the left) presenting “Navigating the Death and Afterlife of a Shipping Channel: The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet,” at The International Symposium: The 150 Year New Waterway, Rotterdam, Oct 13, 2022. Ashley Carse sitting (right). Photo by Henrik Ernstson, 2022.
Ashley Carse (standing to the left) presenting at The International Symposium: The 150 Year New Waterway, Rotterdam, Oct 13, 2022. Joshua Lewis. sitting (right). Photo by Henrik Ernstson, 2022.
Ashley Carse (standing to the left) presenting at The International Symposium: The 150 Year New Waterway, Rotterdam, Oct 13, 2022. Joshua Lewis sitting (right). Photo by Henrik Ernstson, 2022.
The Terra Potentia project team (from left) Jonas Hein, Ashley Carse, Henrik Ernstson, and Joshua Lewis, at the Stadsarchief Amsterdam, 2022. Photo by Henrik Ernstson, 2022.
