Abstract
As ports seek to maintain support for their operations amidst growing environmental awareness and social pressure, it is important they provide benefits for the local population to offset negative impacts. Ports can add additional economic benefits for the cities they are located in by encouraging maritime clusters, industrial development, a circular economy, and waterfront development. The current level of adoption, interest in future adoption, barriers to implementation, and attitudes towards the views of the local population were assessed via an online questionnaire sent to port authorities in 26 countries. The potential and willingness of ports to be on the frontline of the transition to a circular economy globally has been clearly identified for the first time, seeing a 60% increase between current levels of adoption and future interest in adoption. Barriers to a circular economy are comparable to barriers to widely adopted methods, such as industrial development and a waterfront economy. It is likely that circular economy activities in port cities will add additional local benefits and reduce the negative impacts of a port. A new framework is proposed to help ports and cities collaborate and encourage greater adoption of the circular economy.
Highlights
Accepted: 18 June 2021Ports were developed to facilitate the movement of goods and people; they provide numerous other benefits
This paper aims to identify the global potential of the circular economy within ports, by investigating the levels of adoption, interest and key barriers, with comparisons to maritime clusters, industrial development, and waterfront development
Maritime clusters and port industrial development are relatively stable between current levels and future interest; waterfront economy shows a fall in interest from current levels
Summary
Accepted: 18 June 2021Ports were developed to facilitate the movement of goods and people; they provide numerous other benefits. Whilst the importance of ports for national economies and global trade is clear, there has been a decline in port-related benefits at a local level [2] This has occurred due to increasing adverse environmental impacts, awareness of these impacts, relocation of port-related activity, decreasing employment and the casualisation of that employment, and the increasing use of international (rather than local) inputs. These changes have been driven by globalisation and technological innovations, such as growing ship sizes, mechanisation, and the rise of containerisation, with containerisation dramatically reducing the number of people that need to be employed directly in the port [3]. The OECD [5] found that 90%
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