Towards sustainability in the port sector: The role of intermediation in transition work

Kristin Ystmark Bjerkan,Lillian Hansen,Markus Steen

doi:10.1016/j.eist.2021.08.004

Abstract

Intermediation has received substantial attention from transition scholars. Intermediaries play important roles in configuring, brokering, and facilitating transition efforts and operate in different parts of socio-technical systems. Their node position between transport and energy systems makes port authorities a potentially crucial intermediary in transitioning the many different sectors that intersect in ports. Ports are increasingly orienting their environmental endeavours towards energy issues and are pressured to reduce their global emissions. This paper explores intermediation in ports and investigates how intermediation connects to transition work. Based on a quantitative survey among 96 Norwegian ports, we find that ports engage in intermediation to varying extent, and that intermediation is associated with progressive transition work. The study complements previous research on intermediaries by conceptualising and quantitatively measuring transition work, allowing us to explore in what ways ports rely on intermediation in their sustainability endeavours.

Highlights

Scholars seeking to understand sustainability transitions have increasingly turned to the role of actors in pursuing or obstructing systemic change
The port sector represents a useful case for enhancing our understanding of the role intermediation can play in transition work, encouraging us to explore what role intermediation plays in the transition work of ports
We present the prominence of intermediation in Norwegian ports, above all referring to the number of intermediary activities that ports conduct

Summary

Introduction

Scholars seeking to understand sustainability transitions have increasingly turned to the role of actors in pursuing or obstructing systemic change. Intermediaries are typically placed centre-stage in orchestrating, facilitating and brokering among actors involved in transition work. Given their positioning in-between various actor-networks, intermediaries are as such instrumental in transition work, i.e. pursuing joint goals and actions promoting sustainability transitions, by contributing to different types of intermediary activities. The intermediary role could significantly shape the scope and content of transition work, and thereby produce more and less effective courses towards transformation. We consider transition work to hold both a processual dimension and an outcome dimension; the former among other referring to vision and network building, strategising, and planning, and the latter referring to specific results and impacts on sustainability. To increase our under standing of transition work and its connection to intermediation we turn to a sector hitherto largely overlooked by transition studies, namely the port sector

Results

Discussion

Conclusion