Transnational networks for the ‘greening’ of ports: learning from best practice?

Abstract

Port environmental ‘networks’ are collaborative initiatives in and through which port authorities design an array of policy measures and tools and facilitate policy learning to improve their environmental performance, promote environmental upgrading and deliver sustainable development. Drawing on document analysis, participant observation and information collected through interviews with port managers, network coordinators, and maritime experts in Europe and West Africa, existing forms of port environmental networks, their actors and best practice tools are described and analysed in their influence on environmental upgrading. The theoretical perspective is thereby informed by Castells’s network theory of power, complemented by insights from the literature on policy mobilities—a geographical concept for analysing the global circulation of best practice—ideas, concepts, technologies and policies and the conditions that constrain or enhance their adoption. The study shows that uptake or adoption of best practice tools is limited to a few pioneer ports, a finding that contradicts the dominant conceptualisation of transnational governance networks as transformative and their best practice tools as largely transferable. One reason for this limited uptake is seen in the fact that the networks are created around the political interests of a few powerful actors.