Special Issue on ‘Environment and Sustainability’

Maritime transportation is important, not only for its contribution to global trade, but also for its potential role in our common effort to curb the global environmental problems and make the world’s economic development sustainable. Many national and international policies have been designed or implemented to reduce the environmental impact from shipping activities. These include the IMO 2020 for sulphur emissions, the “Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index’ in 2021, and the mandatory checking of ‘Carbon Intensity Indicator’ in 2023. These not only challenge the industry to attain full compliance in an efficient way, but also motivate each stakeholder, including academia, to make its own contribution towards sustainability in shipping. To collect and disseminate high-quality research on the environment and sustainability, the International Association of Maritime Economists hosted a special issue on ‘Environment and Sustainability’ in its 2020 annual conference organized by the Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Eight research papers were finally selected, with the topics including emissions from shipping, oil spillage at ports and Coastal areas, the relationship between green strategy and financial performance, environmental impacts from ship recycling, digitalization and new technologies for sustainable business, and unmanned commercial vessels. Various methods are employed in these studies, including data-driven methods, analytical modeling, legal studies, literature reviews, surveys, and empirical analysis. The results can contribute to business operations in both shipping and ports, as well as to public policy affecting the design and implementation of pertinent environmental policies.

On the calculation of emissions from shipping, Jasmine et al. (2021) proposed a bottom-up activity-based model to assess the emissions from containerships within the region of the port of Singapore. The model consists of three stages: (1) Data collection from ships; (2) Sequencing data per ship call; and (3) Fuel consumption estimation to calculate the emission per ship call. Almost 2 million Automatic Identification System (AIS) messages were collected and subsequently classified into different groups according to the capacity, engine power, size, and year of delivery of the vessel. The contribution is its consideration of ship draught, in addition to shipping speed and time, in the estimation of oil consumption and emission during ship transit, maneuvering, and hoteling, respectively. An interesting finding is that most emissions are produced by auxiliary engines or boilers of ships over a short period of less than two days. They also found that the seasons have no effect on emissions, and that containerships with a capacity below 3000 TEUs account for around half of the emissions. Their study offers a reliable tool for Singapore to manage the emissions and formulate policies to control pollution. Their model can also be extended to ports with insufficient operational information, so as to improve the operational efficiency of in-port emissions throughout the world.

Carriers are facing difficulties implementing IMO 2020 due to the high cost of low sulphur fuel (LSFO), and many governments will subsidize carriers’ adoption of LSFO when they are calling at their national ports. However, the subsidy may change carriers’ willingness to adopt LSFO and the total social welfare, depending on the relative bargaining power between the port and carriers in this competitive environment. Wang and Jiao (2021) analytically modeled the behavior of carriers in using LSFO in a duopoly environment when both call at the same port which has a government subsidy for the carrier adopting LSFO. They found that the equilibrium strategy depends on the relative cost of adopting vs. not adopting. A government subsidy can reduce the profit of the non-adopting carrier and increase the probability of prisoner’s dilemma. It can also increase social welfare.

Zhang and Dong (2021) analyze state jurisdiction, including both prescriptive jurisdiction and enforcement jurisdiction, over vessel source emissions under Chinese law. Before analyzing the Chinese approach, the international framework of state jurisdiction to reduce vessel source emissions is examined. Then the article summarizes the status quo of implementations of state jurisdiction in China. Compared to previous literature, it is a more comprehensive summary of the relevant Chinese regulations. To evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of state jurisdiction, and to identify the obstacles to such implementation in China, an online survey was also conducted. The article concludes that the provisions for state jurisdiction over vessel source emissions under Chinese law are generally in line with the relevant international legal framework. In terms of the prescriptive jurisdiction, China has already sufficiently exploited it through legislations. However, a more detailed protocol should be adopted to enforce the emission abatement measures. In addition, technological restrictions of the emission detecting devices are the most significant hurdle for implementing the emission abatement measures.

Oil spills pose serious long-term threats to the marine environment, especially in coastal areas, where the ecosystem is the most prolific and sensitive, and where the economic activities are the most active. Therefore, it is very important to assess the potential risk of oil spills in such an area. Galuzzi-Silva and Mata-Lima (2021) used the Coastal area of São Paulo, Brazil as a case study, and evaluated the risk of an oil spill from the Port of Santos, as it not only hosts the busiest port for commercial vessel transportation and long pipelines for petroleum products, but also has active tourist activities, productive mangrove areas, and high fishery production. They studied the potential hazards from the activities of handling oil-related products, as well as their possible environmental impacts, and evaluated the risks to the port activities, mangrove areas, and tourist activities. With such an assessment, it is possible to provide decision support as to which potential affected parties should be given the highest priority in reducing vulnerability.

Alexandrou et al. (2021) conducted an empirical analysis on the relationship between green supply chain management (GSCM) strategy and the financial performance of shipping companies. A questionnaire survey of 289 shipping companies globally was completed for data collection. All sample firms were clustered into ‘the leaders,’ ‘proactive firms,’ and ‘reactive firms’ according to their level of GSCM strategy adoption. The study contributed to current research by introducing new variables of proactive GSCM strategy, and used analysis of variance (ANOVA) to examine the extent to which GSCM strategy has been adopted by shipping firms and the effects of such adoption on corporate financial performance. An interesting finding is that shipping firms are more likely to adopt proactive GSCM strategies, which contradicts the findings of most management studies that reactive firms outnumber proactive and leading companies. They also found that shipping firms that have implemented proactive GSCM practices experience significantly better financial performance. Their study enhances the argument that GSCM practice leads to shipping companies improving both their competitiveness and performance.

Soner et al. (2021) adopt a fuzzy best-worst method (BWM) to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the ship recycling process. After reviewing relevant academic publications, IMO reports and Lloyd Registers, the authors identify eight potential hazards, these being pollutants disposed of through ship breaking, persistent organic pollutants, asbestos, heavy metal residues, oil/bunker pollutants, toxins, coating and paint residues, and ballast water pollutants. A questionnaire survey of five experts, all being health and safety experts working in ship recycling companies in Turkey, is conducted to assess the eight potential hazards. Then BWM, one of the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods, is applied to calculate the crisp weights of the eight potential hazards. The fuzzy BWM results reveal that the heavy metal residues hazard has the greatest environmental impact of the ship recycling process. Toxins have the second greatest impact on the environment, followed by asbestos. This study helps environmental protection agencies, ship recycling companies, and academic professionals to better understand the most significant hazards in the ship recycling process.

Giudice et al. (2021) conducts a bibliometric analysis on digitalization and new technologies for sustainable business models at the ship-port interface. The main research method adopted in this study is a quantitative method, conducting a systematic literature review followed by a bibliometric analysis of a database containing 132 items in English language publications between 1969 and 2020. The content of these articles mainly relates to environmental, economic, and social shipping and seaport business models (EESssBM), digitalization, new technologies, and performance. The study first provides a profound theoretical background, including both the shipping and seaport business models from the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the digitalization and new technologies in seaports. It next offers data analysis, and afterwards presents research findings. The findings indicate that digitalization is one of the most influential factors, and that digitalization and new technologies can help to develop business models in which sustainability is integrated into the business strategy. However, it is difficult to understand the specific contribution that shipping and ports can make to the sustainable goals, as only recently has there been a serious interest in the evaluation of EESssBMs in a ship-port interface. Despite some inherent research limitations, this study has both theoretical and practical implications.

Before an unmanned merchant ship actually sets sail, one of the most critical unsolved issues is the navigational rights of the unmanned merchant ships. The study by Zhu and Xing (2021) aims to fill this research gap. Based upon a thorough analysis of the relevant provisions regarding navigational rights under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the study discusses the differing circumstances of an unmanned merchant ship navigating in different waters, and examines the roles played by public stakeholders, including port States, flag States and coastal States. Potential legal barriers to the navigational rights of unmanned merchant ships are then identified, and appropriate policy recommendations are proposed. This study contributes to clarifying and justifying the navigational rights of unmanned merchant ships.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).