Engage! Colonial Past, green Future?

How can ports become landscapes of decolonization and green transformation for all? In ports, everything mixes with everything else: water meets land, nature meets technology, local commodity flows meet global ones, and everything is in motion—ideally toward the “green” landscapes of the future promised by the energy transition, the construction transition, and the transport transition. But how far have we really come? And what if many supposedly green achievements represent less a transformation than a continuation of old patterns?

In a lecture, sociologist Anne Tittor from the German-Argentine research project TrASas will discuss the socio-ecological transformation associated with the energy transition and the shaping of sustainable supply chains. Afterwards, early-career researchers in landscape and urban studies from Europe and Latin America will discuss how extractive practices today are often merely spatially relocated, while new patterns of urbanization continue to reproduce old hierarchies.

Using the examples of lithium routes from the Puna region in Argentina, hydrogen extraction from the Guaraní Aquifer in Uruguay, and polar expeditions departing from the ports of Hamburg and Bremen, the researchers trace how global discourses produce local landscapes: transformed ecosystems, extractive infrastructures, social inequalities, and new dependencies along global supply chains. Recognizing these dynamics, the conference argues, is the starting point for real change.

Programme

3.00 pm: Welcome Ursula Richenberger (Deutsches Hafenmuseum)
3.05 pm: Introduction Prof. Dr. Lisa Diedrich (ÉLAN Chair, TU Berlin)
3.15 pm: Keynote speech PD Dr. Anne Tittor (Jena University, director of the German-Argentinian research network TrASas on socio-ecological transformation)
3.45 pm: Statements by PhD researchers Alejandro Orduz (TU Berlin), Aniella Goldinger (TU Berlin) and Alejandro Varela (EPFL Lausanne), Dr. Melcher Ruhkopf (Uni Kassel)
4.45 pm: Discussion moderated by Prof. Dr. Lisa Diedrich
5.30 pm: End