Terra Potentia: The World-making Force of Dredging

Project title: Terra Potentia: The World-making Force of Dredging
Project leader: Henrik Ernstson  (SEED)
Participating universities/companies/other organisations: German Institute of Development and Sustainability  (IDOS), Tulane University , Vanderbilt University
Financing: VR
Project period: 2024-01-01 – 2026-12-31

As ports across the world deepen their harbors to accommodate ever-larger oceangoing ships, dredging is assuming a more prominent role in coastal environmental management and policy. First, the project investigates how dredging firms and state entities develop technologies, analytical techniques, financial mechanisms, and capital to accomplish harbor deepening projects and ship channel expansions. Second, we examine four case studies across the European Union and the United States to evaluate the role of dredging in producing situated environmental transformations in coastal and riverine landscapes. Drawing on a mixedmethods incorporating qualitative and geospatial approaches, we approach dredging as an economic and technical practice that connects the demands of port and maritime development with changing landscapes and waterscapes in and around major ports. The project will contribute the first multi-sited case study of the economic geography and political ecology of dredging and sediment movement. The project will reveal how the technical, political and economic process of dredging produces environmental change and impacts natural
resources and human communities.