From a first glance Le Havre (LH) does not present itself as a bastion of sustainability. As the largest container port in France, a city of almost purely concrete, and the home of many chemical refineries, there is definitely much work to be done before Le Havre can be considered Green. However, amidst the concrete, Le Havre is full with ambitious environmental projects – most notably the eclectic urban oasis known as Hangar Zero – as well as nature reserves in the surrounding area to get lost in for hours. Whether you are looking to get involved in ecological work or just want to spend time in nature, you will find it in Le Havre. In this article we focus on Le Havre’s history through an environmental lens, and in a subsequent article you can read about specific organizations in Le Havre to get involved with–Growing Your Sustainable Roots in Le Havre.
The history of Le Havre’s starts with a port. Being located on the estuary of the Seine river, Le Havre is connected to Paris and passes through the biggest city in Normandy, Rouen, whose port was opened in the 6th century. Later, King François opened Le Havre’s port in 1517. More recently, Le Havre’s history is entangled in trade and ecological challenges in the 21st century. Two thirds of French international trade passes through Le Havre, making it the largest port in France, the 4th in northern Europe, and the 58th in the world by number of containers. These figures highlight a challenging situation for the port city. As the most important port to access the French market, it is losing traction in competition against other ports in the Northern Range such as Rotterdam, Hamburg and Antwerp.
According to the French government, “The year 2011 was marked with a new fall of Le Havre port’s market share in the [Northern] range, […] contrasting with the [container traffic increase in] the other ports of the region”. To tackle LH’s lack of competitiveness in the beginning of the 21st century, French authorities developed a major joint venture comprising the port of Paris, Rouen and Le Havre all together, creating HAROPA., This is part of a wider project called Axe Seine which aims to enhance Paris’s competitiveness as a European metropolis by concentrating its future developments along the Saine. Associations and initiatives like Hangar Zéro aim to challenge this narrative by offering a degrowth perspective.
Another key factor of competitiveness is transportation from the port to the hinterlands, which is the main problem of LH, given its limitations in post load-off transit. This dynamic can be seen with the newest container ship stop— Port 2000 —which allows for the largest type of containership to stop in LH, but still fails to fix the bottleneck present at post load-off transit. In 2023, 85% of all containers were transported by road, 10% by inland navigation and 5% by train. In light of this, many projects were proposed to increase inland navigation. It was eventually decided in 2018 that building a new dyke, called the chatière, would provide greater access to the Seine thus increasing total offload capacity through fluvial channels. Support for this project are the many challenges the port currently faces regarding inland navigation. Namely economic, as the current river transportation requires first to move containers from the maritime port to the river one by one on truck or train before shipping them. Also logistical, as not all river boats are allowed at sea, which is the only way to access port 2000 for now and this connection requires good weather conditions making it unreliable according to Haropa. As we have seen, because of economic reasons Le Havre’s port seeks expansion to inland travel through increased use of the Seine. However, the chatière, dyke, they propose to this end raises environmental concerns.
The port authority’s chatière was challenged in court by environmental associations on the basis of two concerns. First, building a new dyke comes at an important environmental cost. Associations like Ecologie pour le Havre consider the cost to be much higher than the benefits. According to the principle of “éviter, réduire, compenser” (avoid, reduce, compensate) of the French law, all large infrastructure projects must include an environmental impact evaluation before, companies are held responsible for their environmental impact and must find a balance in their project, avoiding environmental impact altogether or reducing it if possible, or compensate for the loss caused by this activity. If inland transport is less carbon emitting than road transport, Haropa plans to transit only 12% of containers via rivers and canals (compared to the current 10%). Hence, the environmental benefits are questionable.
The second claim against building the chatière concerns a fish breeding area situated where the dyke would be constructed. The project will destroy this habitat and reduce the number of fish. The impact on biodiversity and fishing are clear. The Conseil d’Etat (French highest court for administrative litigation) still approved the project in December 2024. The construction started in March 2025.
The Seine estuary is also an important environmental concern when it comes to the development of the port. As container ships are in a race for gigantism, so do ports such as Le Havre. The estuary is a protected area where a wide range of bird species breed every year. This fact indicated the need to scrutinize the industrial activities with respect to environmental norms.
Looking at the port from La Catène, you can see the construction of the new cruise terminal on the other side of the water. This problematic project by Haropa was started in 2024 with the support of Le Havre’s mayor and the region’s authorities. The project explicitly bet on an increase in cruise activity and will allow hosting ever vaster oceanliners. The terminal will comprise 3 halls and a park. The environmental argument of the project is that Haropa is currently electrifying the terminals of the port, allowing for a greener energy source. The left is opposed to the project and plans on transforming the building for other purposes — mostly cultural or community venues — if they are elected at the mayor’s office in 2026. The right — in power in LH for the last 30 years — has wished to develop tourism and the service economy in LH, which requires attracting often older and richer demographics. According to the authority, the cruise terminal will attract more consumption to the city. This argument is combated by the left which argues that cruises are entirely environmentally nonsensical and therefore merit none of the public’s finances–better used for other demographics. As we have seen, Le Havre’s industrial developments are rooted in response to competition, but often fail to account for the needs of the natural environment that the city is embedded in. Outside of industry, the perceived panacea of “development” is confronted with the associated environmental costs, dynamics which are present in Le Havre.
In France, 43% of energy consumption and 23% carbon emissions are due to the construction sector, and real estate is a serious question. Le Havre’s population has been shrinking since the 1990s and is now stabilizing. To tackle this trend, the right-wing mayor’s office started developing “Le Havre vision 2020,” an urbanizing project aiming to “modernize” the city. The explicit goal was to appeal to older people and highly educated workers to develop the tertiary activity of the city, which is historically industrial. The Quartier de l’Eure, the neighbourhood where Sciences Po is located, best embodies the strategy. The overall strategy is for the authority to use public funds to develop amenities in poor neighbourhoods in order to then sell former port areas to real estate companies to build housing that will benefit from the amenities. As a result, new buildings in the Eure neighbourhood are 50% more expensive than the older buildings in the same area, because they benefit from the amenities. This neoliberal urban planning is questionable for many social and environmental reasons. Systematic destruction of old buildings to construct higher standing housing is ostensibly an unsustainable urban development policy.
The development of former port areas to the southeast of the city are also problematic. Flooding is arguably the most important problem of LH in the middle/long term. Especially because the city is already at high risk of flooding coming from the river Seine to the East. This risk is present even as the city fails to use the bathtub approach for estimating submersion risk–something that every other French city does. Flooding would directly affect the industrial port, the Eure neighbourhood, and Danton. More broadly, the lower part of the city is under high risk of submersion, leading real estate companies to try and make quick profits there before the eventual floodings, at the expense of the buyers. According to projections, floods will damage buildings in the Eure neighbourhood in the next 20 years, namely before many people will finish repaying their loan.
In this brief outline of Le Havre’s environmental story we have seen how Le Havre is both a victim and perpetrator of environmental degradation–a sort of double identity implicit in all environmental problems. Modern societies must mitigate their environmental impact at the same time as they build resilience to the effects of this very impact. By focusing on two dynamics in Le Havre, the industrial and commercial expansion of the port through the chatière project and the cruise terminal, as well as the adaptability problems Le Havre faces with real-estate and flooding risk, we have seen this double identity in play. For more information on specific projects in Le Havre engaged in these environmental problems see the next article–“Grow your sustainable roots in LH.”
Le Dragon Déchaîné 