Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

ENVIRONMENT

Bordeaux mayor seeks to ban cruise ships from city centre

The mayor of Bordeaux is looking to ban cruise ships from docking in the city centre after complaints that they are ugly and polluting.

Published: 20 August 2024 13:29 CEST
Bordeaux mayor seeks to ban cruise ships from city centre
The Seven Seas Mariner cruise ship (R) docking on the Garonne River along the quays in downtown Bordeaux, south-western France, on August 16, 2024. (Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU / AFP)

The south-west French city of Bordeaux is a popular stop-off point for cruise ships, and the number of ships stopping over in the city centre has doubled in the past decade,

City officials have so far been successful in limiting the total number allowed to dock in the city centre to around 40 per year, but now the mayor Pierre Hurmic wants them out of the city centre altogether.

Cruise ships currently dock at the Port de la Lune, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and can travel from the Atlantic ocean inland to the city of Bordeaux thanks to the large estuary of the river Gironde, which is crucial for trade as well as tourism.

Recently, Bordeaux’s city council proposed that cruise ships moor along the right bank of the Garonne instead – this would put them downstream from the Chaban-Delmas lifting bridge and out of the central parts of the city.

Why change the location?

It is largely to address aesthetic and environmental concerns, as other French cities, like Marseille, have sought to do in recent years.

“More and more people in Bordeaux are being disturbed by the arrival of cruise ships in the city centre, and it’s becoming increasingly unpleasant,” Mayor Pierre Hurmic, from the Green Party, told AFP, adding that they resemble “actual floating buildings in some of the most aesthetically pleasing parts of the city”.

This is one of several environmental plans Hurmic has for the city. He has also proposed other ambitious projects, such as covering the ring road with solar panels.

READ MORE: Bordeaux’s epic plan to cover the entire ring road with solar panels

As for the cruise ships, Julien, a 37-year-old Bordeaux resident told AFP that “visually, they are not the most beautiful… The project to have them parked a little further north would not be bad at all”.

“For me these ships are big polluters, they have no place in the city centre”, added another resident, Charlotte, 32.

The relocation of the ships away from the city centre could also be a way to encourage more environmentally friendly boats that rely on electricity and to limit the polluting diesel engines. 

Building the necessary infrastructure on the current docking site, “in the heart of the UNESCO perimeter”, would prove to be “very imposing and extremely costly”, the mayor said, noting that it would be “much easier” to do it on the right bank.

According to the Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux, the project is still “at the technical and regulatory studies stage”. 

The project is nevertheless controversial.

In an interview with the regional newspaper Sud Ouest in July, the president of the Bordeaux-Gironde Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI), Patrick Seguin, said that the “decision would have heavy consequences for Bordeaux trade”, adding his frustration that the CCI had not been involved in the discussion.

According to a study by geographer Victor Piganiol, a cruise passenger “spends an average of €150 a day and up to €200 during a stopover” in Bordeaux, compared with an average of €89 in Le Havre, €80 in La Rochelle and €44 in Marseille.

This higher spending in Bordeaux is mostly explained by people purchasing wine bottles.

“When they pass through Bordeaux, the cruise promotional brochures highlight the vineyards and their prestigious appellations”, the researcher said. Visits to nearby châteaux are often organised and included in the cruise package.

Georges Simon, president of the Bordeaux Mon Commerce association of traders and artisans, told AFP that he is not “opposed” to the project and understands the issues, particularly ecological, but he expressed concerns about the new choice in mooring location.

“If tourists stop in Bordeaux, it’s to visit Bordeaux. It’s not to visit empty quays a few kilometers before the city centre (…) There will need to be some kind of solution,” he said.

The town hall has considered this and they are counting on a network of river shuttles to transport visitors from one bank to the other. They believe that docking ships in a “less congested” area will also facilitate the use of buses to travel around the département and the region.

Still, Victor Piganiol was doubtful. “I don’t know if the average cruise passenger who just came here to do a bit of tourism in the city will be able to motivate himself to cross the Garonne or take a bus.”

As for the cruise passengers themselves, one of them – American Rony Bass who arrived last weekend aboard the Seven Seas Mariner ship, said: “For us, it’s great to be in the heart of Bordeaux.” 

“We’re free to explore the city on foot with a map. Otherwise, we’d have to take a taxi and do the same on the way back.”

Member comments

  1. The cruise ships are a visual disaster here, as in the Venetian lagoon. The numbers they disgorge into increasingly fragile environments have to be better managed.

  2. I have seen the impact of huge cruise ships dumping thousands of people on the center of a city and it is NOT pretty. It is not unreasonable to ask these tourists to avail of river shuttles or taxies into the center of the “beautiful, historic city” they have presumably come to see.

  3. Overtourism is destroying the cities it visits – both their environments and communities. More needs to be done to curb the Disneyfication of people’s homes and livelihoods

  4. Overtourism is destroying the cities it visits – both their environments and communities. More needs to be done to curb the Disneyfication of people’s homes and livelihoods

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

ENVIRONMENT

‘Bees starving’ in disastrous year for French honey

Beekeepers across France say it has been a disastrous year for honey, with bees starving to death and production plummeting by up to 80 percent.

Published: 24 August 2024 16:38 CEST
'Bees starving' in disastrous year for French honey

Mickael Isambert, a beekeeper in Saint-Ours-les-Roches in central France, lost 70 percent of his honey and had to feed his colonies sugar to help them survive after a cold, rainy spring.

“It has been a catastrophic year,” said Isambert, 44, who looks after 450 hives.

A beehive typically produces 15 kilos (33 pounds) of honey a year, but this time, Isambert said his farm had only produced between five and seven kilos.

When it rains, bees “don’t fly, they don’t go out, so they eat their own honey reserves,” said his co-manager and fellow beekeeper Marie Mior.

Low temperatures and heavy rainfall have prevented bees from gathering enough pollen, and flowers from producing nectar — which the insects collect to make honey.

‘Some died of hunger’

Bad weather has affected honey producers countrywide, with spring production dropping by 80 percent in some regions — figures that summer harvests will struggle to offset, said the French national beekeeping union (Unaf).

Rainfall rose by 45 percent on the yearly average, Unaf said in a letter to its local branches.

“With weather conditions that have been catastrophic in many regions with abundant rain… and low temperatures until late, many beekeepers’ viability is under threat,” said Unaf.

Temperatures stagnated below 18 degrees Celsius (64 Fahrenheit), the minimum temperature needed for flowers to produce nectar, said Jean-Luc Hascoet, a beekeeper in Brittany in western France who lost about 15 colonies.

“For some of my colleagues it was worse,” he said.

“In June, the bee population increases and the needs of the colonies grow but as nothing was coming in, some died of hunger,” said Hascoet.

‘Black year’ 

French beekeepers had already been reeling from dealing with several seasons of scorching heat and delayed frosts, according to Unaf president Christian Pons, making this “black year” even worse.

“Ten years ago, I made one and a half to two tons of honey per site, compared to 100 kilos today,” said Pons, a beekeeper in the southern Herault region.

Honeymakers earlier this year protested against “unfair competition” by foreign producers, which led to the government releasing five million euros ($5.6 million) in aid.

French consumers eat on average 45,000 tons of honey per year, about 20,000 tons of which is produced in France, according to the left-wing Peasants Confederation union.

SHOW COMMENTS