This project investigates a recreational area that separates Brielle, a small Dutch village and the Port of Rotterdam, the largest industrial port in Europe. The recreational area emerged after the arable land which surrounded the village of Brielle was overtaken by the rapidly expanding fossil fuel industry in the late 60s in the Netherlands (Hein 2018; Boon 2012). The area stretches around 8 kilometres and is used for camping, sports and leisure. It also acts as an effective green shield that blocks the view of the industrial ports oil tanks and refineries. On the village side of the recreational area is the lake of Brielle which is surrounded by vegetation, small beaches and habitats for a population of different bird species. On the port side of the recreational area is the !Hartel” canal which is a straight waterway, streamlined for inland barges to effectively transport bulk cargo and oil products to Germany and beyond. The recreational area, in this way, becomes a separator between logistics, fossil fuels and some of the most carbon-intensive industries in the Netherlands and the everyday life of people in the village of Brielle.
My project is inspired by the work of Daniel Hausknost who is a professor in social ecology. In a recent article (2020) he writes about sustainable transition(s) and the tension between what he calls the lifeworlds of !the environmental state” and !system sustainability” (1). The tension lies in how countries in Western Europe succeeded in creating a clean, green, and healthy environment for their citizens while maintaining or expanding consumption and fossil-fuel dependencies. The citizens are therefore temporarily shielded from the ecological and environmental disasters ingrained in the industrial use of fossil fuels while continuously being dependent on them for the maintenance of their unsustainable lifestyles. In other words, there is a bifurcation between the lifeworld and the system(s) or infrastructures needed to maintain the lifeworld, and this bifurcation makes transformation more difficult.
My concept of a !green gift” comes from architecture and professor Keller Easterling theory on the power of infrastructure where she describes the idea of a gift as: !an arm-twisting handshake that disarms and controls with apparent benevolence”. Thus, the act of gift-giving is a political tactic of distraction but also as an offer you cannot refuse (219). I use Easterling"s theory to think about the recreational area as this type of green gift to the people in Brielle—a way to force an acceptance of the industrial expansion by presenting a pleasurable recreational lifeworld: an ecological distraction from the desolate fossil fuel infrastructures that slowly consume their surroundings. Multiple questions arise: was the creation of this area thought not only to benefit the people in the village, but also the industrial actors at the port by limiting resistance to the expansion? Will the green gift continue as a limit resistance or is it possible to turn it into a place that sprouts new ecological imaginaries of change?