Port accessThe Bilbao Town Council and the Port Authority have declared their commitment to sustainable port development after signing the ten objectives set out in the AIVP Agenda 2030. This action demonstrates that cooperation between Town and Port is exemplary in Bilbao.
Likewise, the Port Authority of Bilbao has ratified the Port Center missions charter, which in ten principles defines the main challenges and objectives which all port centres should achieve. This document aims to accompany all such centres wishing to open ports to citizens, create an awareness of port professions and activities among young people, and to develop the emergence of a living town-port culture.
The documents were signed by the Mayor of Bilbao, Juan Mari Aburto, and the Chairman of the Port Authority, Ricardo Barkala, in the presence of Lorea Bilbao, President of Itsasmuseum (Maritime Museum of Bilbao) and Territorial Deputy for Basque, Culture and Sport, and Olivier Lemaire, Director General of AIVP. The act was carried out during the VI International Citizen Port Meeting, organised jointly by the Port Authority of Bilbao and AIVP, and held at the Itsasmuseum. Some fifty representatives of town councils, ports and port centres in Germany, Belgium, Norway, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Canada, Morocco and Madagascar were taking part.
The Port Center of Bilbao, was created by the Port Authority on the second floor of the Itxasmuseum in 2018, and became part of the AIVP Port Center Network, which comprises other similar structures of port cities such as Le Havre, Antwerp and Genoa. The main aim of this network is to share innovating projects and to discuss the interaction between port and citizens in order to recover a relationship affected by the ever increasing frequent physical separation between cities and these structures.
Agenda 2030
By signing AIVP Agenda 2030, the Port Authority and the Town Council join over 70 other ports and cities like Marseille, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Dublin, Oslo and Montreal in search of more sustainable port cities. In addition, both reinforce their links with the AIVP, the only global network working for the urban, social and economic development of, and the reduction of the environmental impact on port cities. The ratified document adapts the UNO Sustainable Development Objectives to port-city relations within a series of 10 objectives related to themes such as climate change, energy transition, circular economy, sustainable mobility, port identity and culture, human capital and biodiversity preservation.
The ten objectives are as follows:
- Adapting to climate change
- The energy transition and the circular economy
- Sustainable mobility
- Renewed governance
- Investing in human capital
- Port culture and identity
- Sufficient good quality food for all
- Port city interface
- Health and living conditions
- Protecting biodiversity
Port Center Mission Charter
In order to efficiently accompany the rendezvous between port and citizens, each Port Center develops its own activities programme within the context of different missions clearly defined and shared within the framework of a Port Center’s Missions Charter, which can be resumed in ten points:
- Present and explain the port.
- Promote port professions.
- Encourage the port.
- Live the port from within.
- Learn through the Edutainment concept.
- Adapt to the public.
- Commit the Port Community.
- Develop the Port Center in synergy with heritage and cultural actors.
- Remain neutral. Develop the spirit of a Forum for Port Culture.
- Favour interchange of experiences
Port Center Bilbao
Technology, design and communication are the three pillars supporting the 400-metre square Port Center, which combines its educational purpose with accessible resources and games in Basque, Spanish and English for all publics.
Port Center Bilbao presents a scheme of contents enabling an understanding of the Port Extension, of the companies that are set up there, of port commercial and industrial activities, without forgetting its great energy pole and its goods and passenger traffic.
There are games and videos about how goods are loaded on to ships and transported to their final destiny, with special emphasis on international trade, about the main ports, inter-modality, dry ports and the qualified professions so that the whole machinery works perfectly. And of course, there are the actions taken in benefit of sustainability and the environment.
The AIVP (Worldwide Network of Port Cities)
The AIVP is the only international organism that for thirty years has brought together all the public and private actors involved in port city development. The AIVP is a privileged witness of the transformation the cities and ports throughout the world are undergoing. It helps its members in the implementation of new strategies that enable them to be in a better position to face the changes being announced and that influence the economic, social and environmental development in the port city: port-town integration, reorganisation of worldwide economic circuits, the social integration challenge, climate change, energy transition, and the cruise market dynamic among others.
