Climate Change Adaptation Planning for Ports

The project is a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) $260,000, 4-year project. Commercial ports are increasingly affected by the impacts posed by climate change. Because ports are vital nodes for shipping and global trade, this situation has significant implications for the global economy and human welfare. Although many ports are now developing and implementing adaptation strategies, most are under time and financial constraints and undertake the 'go it alone' approach with very limited participation from other stakeholders. This complicates decisions about when, how and to what extent appropriate strategies and capacity investments should be committed, in order to successfully adapt to this new but highly uncertain reality. The time has come for a paradigm shift in how ports plan for and enact new strategies. Although there is an urgent demand to create more knowledge for this purpose, little research has been undertaken in Canada or elsewhere. This is certainly not helped by the mainstream research approach that emphasizes on physical construction, isolated case studies, and assumes that climate change impacts are always negative problems to be solved. Understanding such, based on policy implementation theory, the project aims to achieve four main objectives: 

1) To understand the current decision-making process of ports in climate adaptation planning

2) To identify attributes that can catalyze collaboration between ports in climate adaptation planning

3) To identify ways that can facilitate the transfer of adaptation strategies and solutions to countries and regions under different geographical and cultural contexts, notably remote, aboriginal regions and the emerging markets

4) To assess the theory of policy implementation under the context of climate adaptation planning