With the largest Climate Week NYC on record upon us, discussions on climate resilience, adaptation, project finance, and “frontier tech” are taking center stage in workshops, panels, and fundraising pitches across the city. These conversations and plenaries tend to focus on “big bets”: higher-risk, high-reward moves with potential for global impact. However, the discourse this week should also be about investing in the city’s working waterfront because it is both a smart climate policy and a winning workforce model.
As climate change forces us to confront coastal flooding and superstorms, we need to rethink how we redevelop and manage the city’s 520 miles of coastline. There is a clear opportunity to leverage the city’s waterways for efficient transportation of people and goods, reduce truck congestion on our overcrowded highways, reduce emissions, and invest in New Yorkers themselves to be the living wage workforce that powers this growing economic sector.
Many of us see the waterfront primarily as a site for land-based redevelopment, housing, and recreation. An updated, contemporary view — informed by models from across the world — includes the working waterfront and the people who captain our ferries, move our food, connect our ports, and continue the long, storied tradition of maritime in New York City.
The Economic Development Corp. and Department of Transportation, among others, have done leading work in this area through initiatives like the NYC Ferry expansion and Blue Highways pilots; Climate Week NYC is the stage to issue a call for policies and programs that embrace the waterways as both climate and workforce solutions.
The coming decade presents a transformational opportunity for educational institutions, industry partners, labor organizations, and community groups to construct the career pathways needed to support the growth of the maritime sector and demands of a generation focused on climate and coastal resilience.
In preparing for this coming workforce, community colleges can train and meet growing demand for licensed, trained, and credentialed workers all along the city’s working waterfront.
For example, Kingsborough Community College, located in South Brooklyn, where the Sheepshead and Jamaica Bays meet the Atlantic Ocean, operates a maritime technology program that is training the next generation of local mariners.
Kingsborough students majoring in maritime technology graduate with 225 days of sea time, an associate’s degree, and a promise of employment in great jobs with good pay along the working waterfront. These are jobs in and around New York Harbor that allow people to live locally and return home to their families at the end of the workday.
These on-water climate jobs are as important as jobs at venture-backed climate tech start-ups. It is time to view them and the maritime industry and working waterfront they support as an integral part of the city’s workforce and climate future.
If we are going to invest millions in protecting and modernizing our waterfront, we should also invest in the New Yorkers who will build, operate, and maintain it in the future.
Raskin is president and CEO of the Waterfront Alliance, where she leads efforts to advance resilient, accessible, climate-ready, and economically vibrant waterfronts. Duitch is the eighth president of Kingsborough Community College (KCC).