A New Agenda for the Maritime Supply Chain
Sustainability expectations are growing in the shipping industry, and a new agenda is emerging. Dr Henrik Sornn-Friese is working to unify what have been, until now, fragmented attempts to bring best environmental practices to the maritime supply chain.
Sornn-Friese is Director of CBS Maritime, an organization in the Copenhagen Business School focused on maritime research and teaching. His partnership with Dr David Gillen and Dr Jane Lister of the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, Canada, won a Canadian federal government Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant to develop an international research network on green shipping policy solutions.
The aim of the project is to facilitate better awareness and understanding of environmental management challenges and best practices for producers, shippers, shipowners, customers, ports and local communities.
The partnership includes 10 academic partners and eight industry and government partners across Europe, North America and South East Asia. The project commenced late fall 2015, and HRAS spoke to Sornn-Friese about where he hopes to have the greatest impact.
HRAS: A key element of the project is knowledge transfer between academia and business. What aspects of environmental management will you focus on?
The partnership focuses on three broad themes: corporate governance, port governance and stakeholder governance.
The corporate governance theme examines the nature and implications of the market-based green demands that cargo owners increasingly force upon shipowners and operators, whether in bulk or liner shipping. This will further our understanding of the drivers and benefits of corporate responsibility in shipping.
The port governance theme focuses on the potential for reducing the emissions from ships in ports and the port’s role in such efforts. We aim to identify the main drivers, challenges and advantages of green port governance.
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