Port de Barcelona announces at Esade an intensification of social sustainability efforts

Por de Barcelona is setting its strategic sustainability priorities to balance the relevance of environmental, economic, and social dimensions. This was announced today by its president, Mercè Conesa, during the presentation of the report: Integration of sustainability by the Barcelona Port Authority 1992-2020 prepared by the Esade Center for Leadership.

Mercè Conesa explained the emphasis in recent years was on the development of the environmental sphere, and now attention is moving towards the social sphere. ‘Initially, sustainability was understood to be related to the environment, but sustainability must encompass all the actions of the port authority and this includes economic and social aspects’, she explained. As an example, one of the priority objectives in the authority’s 2021-2025 fourth strategic plan is to increase jobs in the port over the next five years from the current 37,000 to more than 40,000. She also said the new 2022-2025 equality plan will be approved in the coming months.  

The port authority president stated that: ‘within the framework of sustainability we aim to develop the whole port community through participatory processes that will help strengthen and unite everyone around widely shared principles and values’. She added that the port and city must regularly review their relationship and ‘respond to the needs of the public’.

30 years of sustainability

The report prepared by the Esade Center for Leadership analyses the incorporation of sustainability by the Barcelona Port Authority between 1992 and 2020, as well as examining the future challenges for port activity and the social impact. The report highlights the evolution in the port authority’s commitment to sustainability from a perspective oriented towards protecting the environment to a broader and more comprehensive view that includes economic, social, and governance aspects – as well as addressing relations with the main stakeholders.

The report describes some of the port authority’s most important sustainability milestones: the creation 30 years ago of the old port development agency, which made the dream of opening the port to the public a reality; the creation in 1993 of a quality plan governing council – which years later would be renamed the Governing Council for the Development of the Port Community. This council made it clear that the port is a community of 500 companies and 37,000 workers. An environment department was established in 1995 and was the first of its kind in the Spanish port system. The first sectorial sustainability plan was launched in 2016 and this made the port authority the first in the world to have a plan bringing together the entire port community.

During the event, Àngel Castiñeira, director of the Esade Center for Leadership, highlighted how the port authority has managed to change from being a reactive actor to a leading actor for the city and the Mediterranean: ‘this is an example of how we can do things better for local people and the planet’.

The presentation of the report was also attended by Alba Cabañas, strategic advisor on sustainability and director of LabEcoinnova, and Arnau Queralt, director of the Catalan Advisory Council for Sustainable Development (CADS). Queralt and Cabañas agreed on the great responsibility that the port authority has for managing what the director of CADS described as ‘national infrastructure’. ‘A port must, above all, be economically sustainable. But ports can no longer be isolated from their surroundings. And, in the case of Barcelona, the port is vital infrastructure, as we have seen during this pandemic’, stressed Alba Cabañas.

In the opinion of the director of LabEcoinnova: ‘the port authority is becoming an actor who can create trends, in the same way as benchmark ports like Rotterdam – which is an active agent in the transformation of the circular economy in the Netherlands’. The president of the port authority added: ‘the fourth strategic plan changes our role from being in defensive position to becoming a driving force and one example is the blue economy. If we can take a global view, then we all have more opportunity. Ports are clearly in a process of decarbonisation. We must now consider how we can diversify our activities’.