Red Light Reflections

Inside Amsterdam’s historic district.

Red Light District 1. By Steve. 3/14/18. CC BY-SA 2.0

All the mythology of Amsterdam seems find its mooring in the red light district, the city’s spiritual center of tolerance and liberalism. Yet as I walk through the district on a late afternoon it doesn’t seem to be the mecca of sexual appetite often pictured in the media. I had envisioned (of course) the scarlet pulsing of the lights, women in lace lingerie lounging against open windows, hordes of beer-smelling smelling people weaving their intoxicated way through the streets, then stumbling into those notorious doorways. And perhaps that is the view at midnight, but now with the light of early evening filtering through the trees to the canal bellow I see only a strangely peaceful street occupied by families, commuters on bikes, and the tourists like myself following their curiosity. It is a moment in which I experience that infamous gap between expectation and reality, being in the place versus experiencing its mythology.

I wander towards the edge of the neighborhood where the turrets of an impressively gothic church create an ironic backdrop for the district. On my way I rejoin my tour group in time to hear the guide mention the legends that have arisen around this juxtaposition. She says that according to fable, clients of the nearby district would come to this church in order to receive a kind of fast-pass confession in which they would be forgiven for all they were about to do that night. Another, more colorful legend included priests themselves selling tokens to parishioners that could then be accepted by sex workers in exchange for their services. “So you know what that would make the church,” the tour guide says as my group laughs, filling in the blank.

The actual history of the church, called Oude Kerk, or old church in Dutch, is a bit more drab — most likely it was built early on in Amsterdam's history where it would have been located in the heart of the city — a medieval metaphor for Christianity at the center of daily life.

I walk with my group past Oude Kerk to the front of a small strip of nondescript buildings where the headquarters of the Prostitution Information Center, or PIC, an activist agency working to de-stigmatize sex work in the Netherlands is located. As my group enters the building I take a seat at the back of the small room we have entered. The PIC headquarters are cozy and welcoming — filled with haphazard rows of benches and stacks of nonfiction and memoir. At my back a display window holds a mannequin wearing fishnets, heals, a garter, and a T-shirt reading “sex work is work.” To my left a mural depicts a canal street with pastel coloured buildings around a large red lamp post.

After being seated we are introduced to Jackie and Elsa, members of PIC and sex workers operating in the Amsterdam area. Jackie has light eyes and a kind face. She is celebrating 25 years of work in the prostitution industry — a fairly rare occurrence among sex-workers. When the leaders of our group encourage us to ask her questions about her work she laughs saying, “Ask me anything, I’ve seen it all. You can’t embarrass me, but you might make a fool out of yourself.”

As the conversation begins we learn that Jackie is a registered psychiatric nurse and works with people who experience erectile dysfunction, the disabled, and the elderly among others. She speaks with poise and eloquence, sharing how she likes to have time with her clients to talk and eat. To Jackie, sex work is emotionally validating — she sees it as going hand in hand with her nursing degree; both jobs allowing her to help and connect with people. When sharing how she first entered the sex industry, Jackie described feeling that she had found something incredibly validating, something that allowed her to use her talent for sensitivity and personableness. “I just like to be myself,” she says, matter-of-factly, “clients will ask if I can wear a certain outfit, but I don't like to do that. I usually wear something like this,” she says, motioning towards the floral dress she is wearing over a black t-shirt.

In some respects Jackie considers herself fairly lucky. Her family knows of and accepts her profession, and her brother even worked as her escort at one point in her career. Though she admits that her father wishes she had chosen a different career path, her mother is supportive of her choice, something she says is rare in the prostitution industry.

Elsa, the other PIC sex worker we speak with, works the windows of the red light district. She compares her own and Jackie’s lines of work to different restaurant experiences, saying, “she’s a three star Michelin restaurant and I’m a McDonald's.” Elsa calls window work “Mcpussy” — it’s a fast turnover business with little room for the kind of work Jackie likes to do. She doesn’t use the McDonald's metaphor pejoratively, but as a way to communicate to us the wide variety of services in the prostitution industry. When someone asks if she falls in love with her clients she laughs, almost derisively. “Do you fall in love with the person who serves you at a restaurant? There’s a difference between making a meal for someone you love and slapping together a Big Mac at your job,” she continues, “and there’s a difference between making love and sex.”

As the conversation continues, Jackie talks about the ways in which the industry has shifted over time. The advent of social media has made life difficult for sex workers, who often hide their profession from family and friends. Jackie says that she owns two Facebook accounts, one under Jackie, her sexworker alias, and another under her given name. She had worked hard to keep these two identities separate, keeping her sex worker friends on one platform, and her other acquaintances on the other; that is, until she was outed, presumably by a friend. “I noticed that my dentist and other friends started following my sex work Facebook and I new someone had given me away,” she said, “I don’t want my dentist knowing that about me.”

Jackie is adamant about the need to change the stigma surrounding sex work. She acknowledges that there are many women who are forced into the industry, but argues that human trafficking represents a small percentage of the prostitution industry and that most sex workers in the Netherlands enter the industry of their own will. “We need to end the view that sex workers are always victims,” she says, “this isn’t accurate.”

While the Netherlands is known for its toleration of the prostitution industry, Jackie explains why this isn’t enough. Dutch toleration of the industry was merely the recognition that prostitution is something that naturally occurs despite any laws made against it, legalizing and therefore taxing it enables the government to better ensure the safety of sex workers and make some money off the industry. This attitude, however, is merely one of tolerance and not acceptance. After all, the meaning of the word merely suggests allowing or refraining from punishing a certain activity — it has no requirement for validating, celebrating, or changing the stigma surrounding the thing being tolerated.

Eventually the conversation ends and my group files slowly out of the PIC into the twilight shadow of Oude Kerk. I know that soon the district will begin to change — the sex workers will arrive at their windows and the red lights will turn on and the ethos of the crowd will shift. But for now I walk with my group out of the district, savoring the new understanding that comes with seeing and engaging something experienced before only at a distance. I know that there are other stories, other sex workers who work in the prostitution industry merely to get by, or who are forced into it, and I acknowledge their experiences. Jackie and Elsa, however, represent a different narrative — one is rarely heard.

I think that maybe this is why we travel, to learn that all of our preconceived notions are rooted in our own cultural experience; that they may exist differently elsewhere.

 

EMMA BRUCE is an undergraduate student studying English and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. While not writing she explores the nearest museums, reads poetry, and takes classes at her local dance studio. She is passionate about sustainable travel and can't wait to see where life will take her. 

Greece’s Lifejacket Graveyard

High up in the sunburnt hills of Lesvos, Greece lies a black and orange heap of plastic. It is large, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, but its vastness pales in comparison to the scope of the reasons why it is there—the half a million and growing masses of displaced refugees who have washed up upon the island’s shores.

Lesvos is a major port for refugees fleeing chaos in the middle east, mostly from war-torn Afghanistan and Syria. The journey across the sea can be deadly. Refugees often pay over $5000 to smugglers who will bring them across the Mediterranean to supposedly safe ports in Europe, but there is no guarantee that the smugglers have not been bribed for one reason or another, or that the journey will be successful.

The black and orange heaps rotting in the hills of Lesvos are made up of lifejackets and boats that belonged to those who made it over, but in those quiet mountains one can almost hear the whispering of the hundreds of thousands who were lost on the way. A closer look reveals children’s floaties, some painted with princess decals, some emblazoned with the message, This is not a flotation device.

Once in Lesvos, the owners of these lifejackets were carted into packed camps, where many of them have remained for years. Conditions in the Moria camp in particular have been widely maligned by human rights organizations around the world. The camp was made to hold 2,000 people and now holds over 6,000, according to official reports, though many believe that the number has exceeded 8,000. Refugees live in cramped makeshift tents that flood when it rains, and the camps are overrun by disease, mental illness stemming from severe trauma, and chaos.

Following the Arab Spring in 2011, which catalyzed revolutions across the Middle East, Syria and many other countries experienced a mass exodus, leading to the flood of people seeking asylum in Europe that has come to be known as the modern refugee crisis.

Many refugees are university-educated professionals, fleeing in hopes of finding a better life for themselves and their families. But once in Europe, they are often caught up in bureaucratic tangles that keep them stagnant in the camps for years at a time, despite the fact that many already have family members in other parts of the continent.

Thousands of volunteers have flocked to the island in order to help. Nonprofits like A Drop in the Ocean host lessons and English classes for refugees, and facilitate the safe landings of newly arrived boats. Others work to provide hygienic services, like the organization Showers for Sisters, which provides safe showers and sanitary products to women and children.

Lesvos itself still functions in part as a tourist town, though it is mostly populated by volunteers, refugees, and locals. Not far from the lifejacket graveyard is the pleasant seaside town of Molyvos, which boasts sandy beaches and restaurants serving traditional Greek fare.

Much of the island is made up of open space, populated only by olive groves and forests, open plains, and abandoned buildings. The lifejacket graveyard is located in one such empty plain, and except for scavenging seagulls and goats, the area is empty, making the presence of the rotting heaps of plastic even more unnerving.

The only other proof of human presence to be found lies on a wall of graffiti nearby a garbage dump, marked by the sentiment Shame on you, Europe.

The combination of the Greek financial crisis and rising tides of nationalism occurring at the same time as the height of the refugee crisis have caused xenophobic sentiments to allow these horrifically overcrowded camps to mar this beautiful tropical island, which once inspired the Greek poet Sappho to write her legendary love poems.

The lifejacket graveyard has been left standing partly because of island officials’ lack of motivation to clean it up, and partly as a statement, a tribute to the thousands who still wait in limbo on the island.

If you are interested in helping out, organizations mostly need financial contributions, legal aid, medical aid, translators, and publicity. It is also possible to volunteer, and opportunities and detailed information can be found at sites like greecevol.info.

Eden Arielle Gordon

Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer, musician, and avid traveler. She attends Barnard College in New York.

Cocoa Industry: For Children by Children?

The cocoa industry continues to rely on child labor, but some companies are trying to change that.

A cocoa worker processes cocoa beans.

From little kids to adults, chocolate evokes an essence of simplistic indulgence most cannot refuse. It is no wonder then that the average American will eat over 11 pounds of chocolate a year. However neither simplicity nor delight are terms found in criticisms of the cocoa industry. More likely one will read statements such as “it will be decades – if ever – before human rights will be respected…”— as concluded in the 2018 Cocoa Barometer’s 2018 report, produced by 15 NGOs including Oxfam and Stop the Traffik.

So who produces chocolate? Most are children who haul heavy bags of cocoa beans or harvest with machetes. Indeed, in West Africa where 70% of cocoa comes from, 2.1 million of laborers are children. The labor is often times dangerous and in a Tulane University study of the 2013-2014 growing season, 96% of child labor was labeled hazardous.

Also critical is that child labor interferes with schooling. Education is essential as it equips future workers with skills that nurture a competitive job market. Considering most of the cocoa growing areas are impoverished areas, the lack of education is a deterrent to ending systemic poverty. Further, many of the children’s parents also worked on cocoa farms and do not understand the risks of child labor or the benefits of education.

Still children are cheaper to employ for cocoa farmers than adult laborers as most cocoa farmers only make $0.78 a day. And even that meager wage is vulnerable to fluctuations in cocoa price on the global market. Goals to reduce use of child laborers by 70% by 2020 have notably failed in part because of the poor wages—in Côte d’Ivôire $0.78 is only 37% of a living wage.

Another factor in the continued use of child laborers is the absence of effective legislative action. Cocoa Barometer described the current political will as lacking “sense of urgency, or ambition to tackle the sector’s challenges.”

One area that legislation has been particularly negligent is trafficking of children. The International Labor Organization in 2002 conducted a study that concluded 12,000 child laborers were trafficked in West Africa. And while 16 years have passed since, it is still common knowledge that child laborers exist in the industry. Efforts to stop it have been ineffective: the Ivory Coast made trafficking illegal, but has yet to educate the prosecutors and police officers who can enforce the ruling.

Rather, companies are taking their own steps to confront child labor. Since 2012, Nestlé has implemented a Child Labor Monitoring Remediation System (CLMRS). CLMRS work directly in local communities and notes instances of child labor, whether self-declared or not. They respond with various forms of remediation, such as tracking school attendance.

Mondelēz International, owners of the Cadbury brand, invested $400 million in 2012 with the explicit goal to “empower at least 200,000 cocoa farmers and reach one million community members.” By 2016, Mondelēz had worked with 92,000 farmers in 861 communities.

Advertisement embodying Cocoa Life’s commitment to empowering cocoa farmers (Source: Cocoa Life).

Mondelēz’s success is because of Cocoa Life, a third-party cocoa sustainability program that is overseeing Mondelēz’s gradual shift to sustainable cocoa. Focusing on child labor, Cocoa Life emphasizes education of both children about their rights as well as educating parents about the negative effects of child labor. And at the end of 2017 116 CLMRS were monitoring the supply in Ghana out of the 447 communities it was active in.

Nestle and Mondelēz are setting examples of what many critics hope other multinational cocoa companies will replicate: reporting their successes and failures so the industry can learn from one another. Increased transparency is only one step though. Another is the hope for legislation in consuming countries that legally hold companies to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights— which is currently only a voluntary framework.

For now cocoa is still a complicated industry driven by the simplistic need to get a fix. But if consumers know the faces behind the candy bar, then awareness will encourage progress. And progress is critical to making cocoa sustainable for future generations as well as viable living for its workers.

 

 

TERESA NOWALK is a student at the University of Virginia studying anthropology and history. In her free time she loves traveling, volunteering in the Charlottesville community, and listening to other people’s stories. She does not know where her studies will take her, but is certain writing will be a part of whatever the future has in store.

10 Ways to Travel More Sustainably

Taking your sustainable living habits on the road.

Traveling by train is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint and see more of the place you are traveling through. Image Credit: Jonathan Combe. CC BY 2.0

It is easy to get caught up in the beauty and newness of the places we travel through. While this element of escapism is part of the magic of travel, it often means forgetting to treat the place we are in as what it is: someone else’s home. Sustainable travel is important—not only because we need to protect the world that is our collective home, but because we need to respect the places that are someone else’s environment, their home. These ten ways to travel more sustainably explore actions we can all take to be greener travelers and to show respect to the places we are traveling through.

1. Avoid flights.

Sometimes this can be difficult to do. However, whenever possible try to opt for slower forms of travel like trains, buses, or boats. It may take you a bit longer to get to your final destination, but you will significantly reduce your carbon footprint and enjoy a richer sense of place. If you absolutely must fly, try to book a nonstop flight — taking off and landing only once uses less fuel. There’s one exception: if you’re traveling alone, driving has more of a negative impact on the environment than flying.

2. Stay in hostels.

There may be fewer amenities, but that means less waste. Many hostels even use renewable energy and recycle. Hostels are also cheaper, and the connections you’ll end up making with your roomates will be priceless.

3. Stay in green hotels.

If hostels are simply not available (or not for you), try to stay in a green hotel. When traveling in the US look for a hotels with a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The certification means that the building is green and energy efficient.

4. Bring your reusable water bottle.

This one is just common sense, but we could all use a reminder. Single use plastics (water bottles and other packaging) are harmful to the environment because they are difficult to recycle and don’t decompose naturally. To learn more, check out 5 everyday products that hurt the environment, or this video, following travel producer Marie McGrory as she attempts to spend a week in Belize without using any single use plastics.

5. Hang up your towels.

Hanging up towels in a hotel is pretty much a universally accepted sign that you’d like to re-use them. Chances are, you probably don’t use a fresh towel every time you shower at home, and it takes a lot of energy, water, and other resources for the hotel to launder everyone's towels, every day.

6. Support the local economy.

According to the World Tourism Organization, out of every $100 spent on a trip, only $5 will have a positive impact on the destination. This is partly due to the uber cheap, made in China merchandise available at almost every popular destination. Instead of buying a cheap sweatshirt, support your destinations “real” economy by purchasing souvenirs from local shops, created by local artisans.

7. Partner with nonprofits.

If you have extra space in your luggage, try to give back to the communities you visit. Partner with organizations like Pack for a Purpose that give the school supplies and other items you pack to local communities. Partnering with a non-profit means knowing what people need, and where they need it, bypassing the negative effects of well-intentioned but harmful gifts.

8. Go on tours run by local guides.

Do your research to make sure you are supporting the local economy and not something that is endangering local communities or their environment.

9. Don’t buy wildlife products.

Again, this one is common sense. When you purchase wildlife products you’re supporting (consciously or not) an industry that trafficks rare and endangered wildlife.

10. Remember: sustainable travel isn’t just about the environment.

Kelley Louise, executive director of the Impact Travel Alliance put it best when she wrote in the New York Times that, “Sustainability has a positive impact not only on the environment, but the culture and the economy of the destination you’re visiting.” While excessive tourism does much to hurt the environment and culture of a place, sustainable travel can begin to reverse that damage.

 

 

EMMA BRUCE is an undergraduate student studying English and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. While not writing she explores the nearest museums, reads poetry, and takes classes at her local dance studio. She is passionate about sustainable travel and can't wait to see where life will take her. 

SOUTH AFRICA: Dinner in Khayelitsha

South African apartheid is frequently written off as a memory, something that ended decades ago. But from the start of my visit to South Africa, it became clear that the violence of that period has continued to bleed into the present, manifesting itself in clear racial and economic divides.

I visited Cape Town in the summer of 2016. Cape Town is a city of contrasts—tall, imposing mountains cast shadows over clear blue seas, and seaside villas luxuriate only a few miles away from derelict townships.

These townships are the subject of this piece. Townships in South Africa are villages that remain from apartheid-era forced exoduses of non-white people, cast out of their homes and crammed into segregated areas.

These townships still stand today. They are mostly collections of mottled tin-roof shacks and cramped streets, and they are home to 38% of South Africa’s population of 18.7 million.

From the beginning of my arrival in South Africa, I was told by locals that the townships were unsafe, especially for outsiders. But one day, I returned to my flat in the town of Observatory and one of my roommates asked me if I wanted to visit one.

The visit would be hosted, she told me, by Dine With Khayelitsha, a program founded by four young township residents designed to foster communication between their communities and those outside. Dine With Khayelitsha started in March 2015, as part of a partnership with Denmark and Switerland intended on working as a fundraiser. It then grew and has now hosted over 100 dinners. Each dinner is attended by at least one of the founders, who assures the safe transportation of every participant.

Thanks to this organization, I found myself on a bus driving into one of the townships, and then I was suddenly in a house with a bunch of strangers, eating authentic South African beans and meat.

We arrived at the township’s president’s home, though she was not there—she was outside campaigning, and instead several locals were cooking the meal for the night.

I had come with my new friend, and among the other attendees were two Dutch women, an artist from Germany, a couple from France and Morocco, and a South African black woman. Noticeably absent were white native South Africans, a fact that we asked the hosts about. Apparently, South Africans themselves still persistently ostracize the townships, creating divisions between themselves and the poorer underside of their country.

Our hosts were a few young men from the townships. They had all attended college and one worked in IT and another in software engineering, and most of them also ran after school programs such as leadership and self-esteem workshops for township kids. They had started this organization in an effort to generate more dialogue among South Africans and to raise awareness and reduce stigma concerning the townships.

First, they asked us to discuss one act of kindness we’d performed recently. As night fell, the talk began to flow more easily.  We discussed the fact that so many kids from townships are forced to go through school and university, if they can make it that far, in order to get menial jobs that can support their families. For these kids, following their dreams is not an option, but it is rather an inconceivable luxury. One of the hosts said that he would love to run education programs for kids, but instead he had to become an engineer to support his family.

After dinner, as we were waiting for a bus to come pick us up, I asked one of the men if most people born into townships grow up wanting to escape, to find better lives. He told me that some did, but in his opinion, it is far more important to stay in the townships and to try to create a better life there. That’s what he had done; he’d gotten an education and a job and still lives in the townships, trying to create programs and to help uplift the state of the community.

I talked to another local who was a writer, and his eyes shone as he talked about how he can capture strange and vivid moments with words—and another who spoke passionately about his desire to hear stories from people all around the world. There was an undercurrent of kindness that seemed to link these people together that I have rarely seen; a desire to include others, to tell stories and to share parts of their lives, to not build walls but to rather create open streams of connection. To create rather than to destroy.

Conversations like this one cannot heal or make up for old wounds inflicted upon non-white people in South Africa—only physical reparations and policy changes can truly begin that process. But they are a step in the right direction—a step towards understanding that we are all part of the same global community, and the walls between us are really made of dust.

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EDEN ARIELLE GORDON is a writer, musician, and avid traveler. She attends Barnard College in New York.

Did 4 Million in India Actually Become Stateless Overnight

A released list of citizens has many worried about the future citizenship status of those excluded.

On July 30th a three year effort in India to update Assam, India’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), overseen by the Indian Supreme Court, released its final draft list. It is the first update since 1951 when the NRC was first carried out to count citizens and their holdings. Critics view the list as a reflection of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s policies as many of the four million excluded are Muslims, who make up ⅓ of Assam’s 32 million.  

And because of the increased discrimination against Muslims in Assam, the intentions of the NRC update are under question.  Many see the proposed 2016 Citizenship Amendment Bill as an embodiment of the discrimination. The amendment, were it to be passed, would grant citizenship to Hindus who fled Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh—but not Muslims. Considering this, UN human rights experts have voiced the opinion that “local authorities… are deemed to be particularly hostile.”

The main concern though for international organizations is that even with legitimate documents, many officials are faulting individuals for minor technical issues. These errors include spelling errors, age inconsistencies, or confusion caused by various names. Aakar Patel, Executive Director of Amnesty International India, addressed such potentially misguided intentions by cautioning the government that the “NRC should not become a political tool.”

But how does one prove their citizenship? Each individual and every member of their family must provide two forms of documentation. The first is considered List A: documentation of an individual’s ancestors who were either on the 1951 NRC or any voter lists between 1951 and March 24, 1971.  The cut-off date is in accordance with the 1985 Assam Accords, which stated any individuals who fled violence after Bangladesh declared independence a foreigner.

Then the individual most prove their connection to their legacy person through List B documents, such as a birth certificate.  Still, both set of documents are difficult to obtain as many are poor illiterate families who either cannot access historical records or simply do not have the relevant documents.

Villagers wait outside their local NRC Center to verify their documents (Source: Reuters).

And for those not on the final list, they will be left with only those rights “guaranteed by the UN” according to Chief Minister of Assam, Sarbananda Sonowal. In other words, these individuals would be stateless: losing land rights, voting rights, and even access to welfare. For those individuals, the state has mentioned foreigners returning to Bangladesh; but Bangladesh has said it is not aware of any of its citizens living in Assam. And even though many news platforms have noted the construction of a new detention center to better process foreigners, Sonowal has said no one will be sent to detention centers

Considering this, South Asian director of the Human Rights Watch, Meenakshi Ganguly said the government must “ensure the rights of Muslims and other vulnerable communities.” And for many human rights activists, such protections are crucial to preventing a parallel to the Rohingya’s loss of citizenship in 1982.

Currently, officials are reaching out to individuals not on the list and educating them on how they can file claims and objections to their status. Members of the Supreme Court have also emphasized that the list “can’t be the basis for any action by any authority” in its current draft form. Although the  “legal system will [ultimately] take its own course” according to Siddhartha Bhattacharya, Minister of Law and Justice.

 

 

TERESA NOWALK is a student at the University of Virginia studying anthropology and history. In her free time she loves traveling, volunteering in the Charlottesville community, and listening to other people’s stories. She does not know where her studies will take her, but is certain writing will be a part of whatever the future has in store.

How the Dutch are Creating “Room for the River”

The 2.3 billion dollar project fighting rising sea levels in the Netherlands.

View of Rotterdam at sunset. Image credit: ZOOM.NL

One third of the Netherlands lies below sea level. Thus, the presence - and threat - of water has been a central part of Dutch culture since the first medieval farmers built dams and levees to control it. Now, a thousand years later, water technology in the Netherlands has evolved to pursue a goal that seems counterintuitive. To control water, and keep their citizens safe from it, the Dutch are in the midst of a 2.3 billion dollar project to let the water in.

The project is aptly called Room for the River—a national aim focussed on widening rivers, creating lakes, plazas, garages—all of which can function as public space but also provide somewhere for the water to go when lakes and rivers spill over. Part of the national shift in thought was due to massive amounts of flooding in the 1990s which forced many people to leave their homes. According to Harold van Waveren, a senior government advisor, the floods “were a wake-up call to give back to the rivers some of the room we had taken.”

In recent years, as cities such as New York and Miami struggle to find ways to protect their billion dollar real estate from rising sea levels, Dutch water engineering has become something of a national export —the Dutch equivalent of Swiss chocolate, or German cars.

“You can say we are marketing our expertise,” Dutch water expert Henk Ovink told the New York Times, “but thousands of people die every year because of rising water, and the world is failing collectively to deal with the crisis, losing money and lives.” He is happy to share his country’s pragmatic solution that views rising sea levels as an opportunity for environmental and social growth: a solution that features neither denial nor barrier building.

Dak Park, the largest rooftop garden in the Netherlands absorbs rain and CO2. Image Credit: dakparkrotterdam.nl

The Room for the River project is most visible in Rotterdam, the gritty city of the 70’s and 80’s that has reinvented itself as a hotbed of modern architecture, design, and business. Rotterdam is now home to innovative structures such as underground parking garages, plazas, and basketball courts that can double as retention ponds during a flood. A few miles outside the city in an area 20 feet below sea level, the project funded a new rowing course which can also hold water in emergencies. The course is part of the Eendragtspolder—an area of reclaimed rivers that doubles as a popular spot for biking, swimming, and community events. The area is also a river basin for the Rotte river and is expected to protect communities when the Rhine overflows—an anticipated 1 in 10 years event. The Eendragtspolder project represents the heart of the Room for the River project: pairing environmental reform with social reform. It’s what Mr. Molenaar, Rotterdam climate chief calls “investing in resilience.”

State of the art rowing course in the Eendragtspolder area doubles as water storage during extreme flooding. Image Credit: Willem Alexander Baan

It seems the United States, with its plans to build an colossal wall around lower Manhattan, has a lot to learn from the Dutch perspective. Unlike the Dutch water parks that serve as protection as well as social spaces, the fortress-like walls being erected along Florida’s coast and the plans for a wall around lower Manhattan will do little to protect from a storm and less for the quality of life of those surrounding it. Unlike water parks, walls separate rather than unite; in a storm they decide who is protected—who gets to live, and who doesn’t. In the best case, they only buy a city a couple of years before the sea rises higher and the barriers built become inconsequential.

“We can’t just keep building higher levees, because we will end up living behind 10-meter walls,” says Harold van Waveren, senior government advisor. “We need to give the rivers more places to flow. Protection against climate change is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, and the chain in our case includes not just the big gates and dams at the sea but a whole philosophy of spatial planning, crisis management, children’s education, online apps and public spaces.”


 

 

EMMA BRUCE is an undergraduate student studying English and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. She has worked as a volunteer in Guatemala City and is passionate about travel and social justice. She plans to continue traveling wherever life may take her.