Boskalis Sustainability Report 2020

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Managing our impact on the environment SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2020 – BOSKALIS For a number of years, Boskalis has been developing innovative artificial reefs – either as a ’stand alone’ habitat or in combination with marine infrastructure or coastal protection – both to enhance the biodiversity around the marine infrastructures we create, and as an integral part of our coastal protection solutions. At the end of 2020 we launched a pilot project in Panama together with three key partners: the local NGO Reef2Reef, environmental organization Coralive and the Maritime University of Panama. The project, located off the coast some 65 kilometers north of Panama City, in the Caribbean Sea, tests a series of modular concepts that could provide a solution to the challenges of the large-scale application of artificial reefs. The project assesses, monitors and compares the ecological performance of different concrete and steel reef-design solutions employing Mineral Accretion Technology (MAT); this uses low-voltage, electrical currents underwater to accelerate the process of calcification, promoting the growth of marine life. ECOSHAPE AND BUILDING WITH NATURE In 2008 Boskalis initiated the EcoShape foundation, which executes the innovative knowledge program Building with Nature (BwN). Although the current BwN program came to an end in 2020; the projects that BwN has enabled, continue. BwN is a design approach that harnesses the forces of nature to benefit environment, economy and society. The approach results in resilient designs tailored to the local context that deliver across the range of the Sustainable Development Goals. The past 12 years have seen extensive work to further mainstream the application of these nature-based solutions. Fokko van der Goot, Senior Environmental Engineer at Boskalis and member of the EcoShape management team explains how it all started. “We would often run into situations where there wasn’t enough understanding of the ecosystems in the areas where we ran our projects towards reducing environmental impact. This resulted in a reactive approach. We realized that by making nature an integral part of project development, the BwN approach, it could help not just minimize the negative impact the development might have, but also create positive environmental and social impact. That required a broad range of knowledge, and that was something we couldn’t develop on our own.” The EcoShape consortium collates and shares knowledge through pilot projects and draws up guidelines for replication and scale-up; this year it published a book, ‘Building with Nature – Creating, implementing and upscaling Nature-based Solutions’ to present the overarching approach and the key lessons learned for successful implementation of BwN concepts; the consortium has made technical guidelines freely available at www.ecoshape.org. BwN is not just about engineering and ecology. “These solutions are inherently dynamic and demand a different mindset to ARTIFICIAL REEF PROGRAM IN PANAMA

Endless Reefs, one of these modular solutions, consists of a collection of steel dodecahedrons and was developed in our own R&D department. The Panama project is unique in that it simultaneously compares non-modular and modular structures, as well as active and passive (MAT and concrete) solutions in the same environmental conditions; it aims to show that such a concept can be initiated, organized and supported locally. The knowledge we gain from the project, which is expected to run until 2022, will be incorporated into our Living Breakwaters program. This follow-up program will use selected modular structures as building blocks within traditional hydraulic structures such as rock breakwaters to enhance marine biodiversity. The pilot evolves around creating a founded basis for opening up new solutions and markets around marine infrastructure; it has the aim of providing a substantial contribution to the enrichment of marine biodiversity. At the same time the pilot intends to initiate discussions with project owners and investors interested in enabling the future expansion of artificial reefs and living breakwater applications. implement them,” says Fokko. “They involve institutional embedding, enabling the right governance setting, multi-stakeholder involvement, capacity building, sustainable financing – you need all these enablers to come to implementation.” To extend the impact of nature-based solutions Boskalis needs the support of solid financing institutions; EcoShape is now recognized as an expert on these solutions by multilaterals such as the UN and the World Bank. In this capacity it participates in climate summits, such as the 2019 Climate Action Summit in New York and Climate Change Conference in Bonn, to share knowledge and experience. EcoShape has been an enabler, paving the way for more commercial projects; we would like to move forward in that direction. Indonesia, developing a ‘training for trainers’ program that has the potential to be replicated for other countries. In December 2020 Van der Groot was invited by the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs to conduct a one-hour BwN training and Q&A session for the Archipelagic and Island States (AIS) forum, created to deal with shared challenges in the areas of climate change mitigation, adaptation, and disaster management. Moving forward, focus will shift towards a more international context with a broad range of international and local partners with the aim of upscaling and mainstreaming BwN. By using the BwN approach, Boskalis can make a substantial contribution to the realization of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by developing value propositions for major societal, environmental or sustainability issues in low-lying deltas worldwide. Building on the success of a BwN project in Indonesia, EcoShape is currently upscaling and mainstreaming the BwN concept in Additional details of the various EcoShape projects can be found on its website (www.ecoshape.org).

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