Invitation to attend presentation of Sustainability Report during Antwerp Green Week

In the wake of the recent financial and economic crisis the public and private partners in the port of Antwerp teamed up in the “Total Plan” (2010) under the motto “Strong through collaboration.” This led to a shared vision and a joint approach for tackling the crisis. Rather than retrench, the port of Antwerp opted to look forward, to invest and to work out a vision for the future with sustainability as the main theme. The port community committed itself to making sustainability part of all the port’s activities. In the couple of years since then both the Port Authority and the private companies in the port have already taken numerous practical initiatives.

In the knowledge that a joint approach affords the best chance of success in further developing Antwerp as a major international port for the benefit of all stakeholders, it was decided to publish a Sustainability Report for the port community as a whole. The main themes of the report are “People, Planet and Profit,” all of which find their nexus in this port in an international context. The partners in this process are Antwerp Port Authority, Alfaport (representing private companies in the port) and the Left Bank Development Corporation.

It goes without saying that drawing up such a report is no easy task. It was decided to adopt the principles of the Global Reporting Initiative for environmental reports, with parameters recorded in numerical form wherever possible. However, the GRI standard is designed for individual companies or organisations, not for an entire community. The work of gathering the data is very labour-intensive and furthermore requires input from various private and public partners (both at Flemish regional and Belgian national level). These difficulties notwithstanding, it was with great pride that the port community presented its first Sustainability Report at the beginning of 2012. This first report represented a benchmark, a zero datum point against which all subsequent developments could be measured. Now, two years later, the second Sustainability Report is in the process of being drawn up. We are now in a position to consider which objectives were attained and which were not, which successes were scored and what could be done better.