Sustainability and sensibility: Schiphol needs the best of both worlds

The furore over Schiphol’s plans to cut slots to appease locals and quell noise, has led to some dissatisfaction over the appointment of ex-union firebrand Joost van Doesburg as head of cargo. 

Mr van Doesburg has always been a passionate supporter of the causes he is employed to take up, which in part explains local shippers’ disappointment that the former employee of the European Shippers Council is not fighting their corner, as might have been expected. 

But in fact, the problem may lie further up the chain: Mr van Doesburg may simply be a gun for hire and fighting exactly as he’s been appointed to do – as he has in previous jobs. Perhaps he is simply taking orders (although there may be easier ways to execute them than by falling out with colleagues). 

As one insider noted: “It’s Schiphol, Alex. Nothing would surprise me any more. Its main focus is ‘the direct living environment’, so I’d not be surprised if Joost is exactly executing what the management expects of his role.” 

Another noted: “Mr Van Doesburg seems to pick his battles, but the industry doesn’t understand which battles he is picking. Perhaps it’s internal battles?” 

There does seem to be a bigger picture. 

First, this summer Schiphol will welcome a new chief executive – and, until Pieter van Oord arrives, it appears the airport is to some extent treading water. 

But who is Mr van Oord? 

He has been CEO of Van Oord for 15 years, having worked there for 30 years. Apparently, under his lead, “Van Oord has transformed itself from a dredging company into a broad maritime contractor. In particular, the growth in offshore wind has resulted in Van Oord now being strongly positioned … The company contributes daily to the major societal issues surrounding climate adaptation and energy transition”.

Japp Winter, head of the airport’s supervisory board, who was appointed in 2022, (with experience on university boards) said at the time of the appointment: “For Pieter, sustainability is a key issue. This is in line with Schiphol’s ambitions to accelerate sustainability and reduce its environmental and climate impact.” 

This suggests that Schiphol’s heavy lean-in to environmental issues is not likely to change.  

But the difficulty for the airport – as it must know by now – is that it’s akin to a ‘Big Tobacco’ executive lobbying for smoke-free spaces. 

There is no doubt airports need to do all they can to encourage sustainable operations. And the Netherlands has always taken its environmental requirements seriously. It is constructing Europe’s first factory for sustainable biokerosene, using regional waste and residue streams as feedstock; the first of its kind in the world, and scheduled to open next year. This – but of course – was supported by KLM, which committed in 2019 to invest in the development, and purchase, of 75,000 tonnes of SAF over a 10-year period – the biggest commitment from any airline at the time. 

Dutch shippers, too, are focused on sustainability. Royal Flora Holland’s sustainability director noted in December that it was a key strategy for the cooperative: “It is necessary to make floriculture sustainable, as well to keep the world liveable for future generations.” 

And Dutch forwarders and hauliers take the environment seriously: Vos Logistics, but one example, has made huge investments in LNG and electric fleets. 

Sustainability is in the Dutch DNA; the country is hard-wired towards it. The Netherlands is in the top 10-to-15 countries in the world for sustainability (depending on who you ask). 

That doesn’t of course mean the country, or its top polluters, can rest on their laurels. What it does mean is that support for Schiphol’s environmental plans could, in fact, be widespread – but only if the airport continues to provide services, collaborates with its partners and works closely with its fellow Dutch stakeholders.

Airports cannot afford to ‘go it alone’ on the environment, and isolated strategies – particularly from a business founded entirely on connections, as airports are – are unlikely to work. That is not sustainable. 

All of this is set against a complex political background, which matters, because Royal Schiphol Group is 70%-owned by the state (and 20% owned by the city of Amsterdam). In November, right-wing populist party PVV won the largest number of seats in parliament. The PVV philosophy opposes European integration, and is “economically liberal”. However, without a majority, it needs to appeal to other parties and, as yet, no new government has formed. 

The outcome of the political wrangling may impact Schiphol’s strategy, whatever the new CEO wants. Those of us outside the Netherlands can really only gasp at statements such as this (about a proposal to cut the number of airside cargo handlers) from a Dutch aviation source: “Two political parties don’t want to cut handlers, it’s a free market.”

The very idea that a political party even knows what a handler is, let alone has an opinion, speaks to how much the Dutch care about logistics, about their main airport and how intertwined politics is with trade (another concept hard-wired into the Dutch mindset). 

But state politics is not the only influence over Schiphol. The airport has managed to fall out with the European Commission too, over slots.  

Under the airport’s initial slot-reduction plan, new entrants – such as JetBlue – would have lost slots. The EC said it “stood ready to intervene”, but this week JetBlue’s slots were confirmed. 

The EC is well-known for its sustainability ambitions – it has just set out plans to reduce its emissions by 90% by 2040 – but regulations, and US-EU aviation agreements, could not be broken, it said.  

Schiphol has strong backers for its sustainability aims, both in the EC and in the Netherlands. It only has to listen, to collaborate and to understand that airports – among all organisations – cannot work alone.  

And triggering domestic warfare among otherwise supportive stakeholders is no way to achieve that most important of ambitions, a sustainable future.