Participating as speaker in the session titled Sustainable Futures for Ports I : Energy, during the 7th Busan International Port Conference 2019, PortEconomics member Theo Notteboom made a presentation on one of the most contemporary port issues: green supply chains.
In the past decades, green supply chain management (GSCM) has developed in view of integrating environmental concerns into the inter-organizational practices of supply chain management. In the past few years, tighter regulatory requirements and strong demands for a cleaner and more sustainable environment exerted by communities at large (e.g. Youth for Climate) are pushing GSCM practices to the next level. Seaports are nodes in global supply chains. They generate environmental impacts through their various functions linked to cargo handling, connectivity to maritime and land transport networks, industrial and semi-industrial activities, logistics and distribution activities and energy production and distribution. Port-related pollution not only damages the ecological balance of nature and the urban environment, but also causes adverse effect on global climate change, which further increases the risk associated with port operations. Seaports, as clusters of economic actors and activities, have adopted a real environmental role and function and in this way (should) contribute to the greening of supply chains in the context of GSCM. The emergence of the ‘green port’ concept is closely associated with the growing environmental awareness of seaport actors.
You may download Theo’s presentation here.
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