Deep adaptation to climate change in the maritime transport sector – a new paradigm for maritime economics?

Abstract

In recent years a significant body of work has been established on climate change adaptation by ports. Like climate change mitigation, work towards adaptation has stalled on the same collective action problem, whereby public and private sector actors avoid commitment to necessary investments. Recently the concept of 'deep adaptation' has appeared, which suggests that, rather than climate change bringing simply incremental challenges that can be adapted to in a piecemeal fashion, in fact, we should expect 'disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war'. However, current port and shipping forecasts continue to predict uninterrupted growth with only minor incremental policy changes already known to be insufficient for mitigation and adaptation. Thus, this paper argues that actors in the maritime transport sector need to consider greater threats than those currently identified and also prepare for a more advanced adaptation timetable.

Maritime governance after COVID-19: how responses to market developments and environmental challenges lead towards degrowth

“…The disruptions of the port of New York due to Hurricane Sandy, and the port of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina resulted in billions of dollars in damage to port-related infrastructure and businesses in the wider area. If the IPCC is correct that such once-per-century storms will become once-per-year storms by 2050, such levels of disruption and cost must be expected (Monios and Wilmsmeier 2020 ) and repair bills cannot be paid ad infinitum.…”

“…The second challenge is climate change: both the need to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 (IPCC 2018 ) and to adapt to the effects that are already locked in (Becker et al 2018 ). These effects include extreme weather, geopolitical risks and resource depletion, all of which will produce more disruptions to global supply chains which, in their turn, will influence the demand for shipping (WEF 2020 ; Monios and Wilmsmeier 2020 ). Both of these challenges can be considered market failures; the container shipping market structure is a result of shielding carriers from competition (Haralambides 2019 ), and climate change is occurring at least partly because carbon emissions are treated as external costs (Stern 2007 ).…”

Marine energy transition with LNG and electric batteries: a technological adoption analysis of Norwegian ferries

“…LNG) and zero (e.g. electric battery) emission energies implies a fundamental paradigm shift in the maritime industry (Monios and Wilmsmeier, 2020). In such circumstances, policymakers are often risk-averse and locked into the incumbent policy regime (Roberts and Geels, 2019).…”

Development of Framework for Improved Sustainability in the Canadian Port Sector

“…Becker et al argue that many of these long-term changes resulting from climate change have not been accounted for in port planning [70]. Monios and Wilmsmeier also suggest that the continued forecasting for uninterrupted growth in the port sector is inaccurate, and the continued minor incremental changes in policy are not sufficient for climate change mitigation and adaptation [72]. The plan to increase port capacity related to this growth must be carefully balanced with infrastructure upgrades to maintain current levels of operation in the face of sea-level rise [73].…”