Demand for ports to 2050: Climate policy, growing trade and the impacts of sea-level rise

Hanson, Susan E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2198-1595 and Nicholls, Robert J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9715-1109 (2020) Demand for ports to 2050: Climate policy, growing trade and the impacts of sea-level rise. Earth's Future, 8 (8). ISSN 2328-4277

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Abstract

Port infrastructure is critical to the world's economy and has seen major expansion over the last few decades. In the future there are likely to be further demands for port capacity which will require additional port area while existing ports will need upgrading in response to sea-level rise to maintain current levels of operability. This analysis considers potential changes to 2050 under four climate-based scenarios which aim to explore changes in international maritime trade consistent with global temperature increases of 2 °C and 4 °C and the implications of associated sea-level rise. All scenarios anticipate a significant increase in trade, and a change in distribution across commodities. The demand for port handling areas in 2050 is roughly double to quadruple that of the baseline (2010) across scenarios. The maximum demand occurs under an unmitigated climate and high intensity in commodity movement with a maximum area in 2050 of 5,054km2. The minimum demand (2,510km2) occurs under a scenario of regionalized green energy production and lower material intensity. The total global investment costs for port adaptation to sea-level rise and provision of new areas are between 223 and 768 billion USD to 2050. These are dominated by the need for new area construction with the adaptation of base year areas to relative sea-level rise representing a maximum of 6% of total costs globally. Therefore, in addition to adapting existing port areas to sea-level rise, it is equally or more important to consider provision of new ports.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding Information: This research has been funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant number EP/K039253/1). The authors would like to acknowledge all colleagues at the Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester and UCL London who worked on the 'Shipping in Changing Climates' project and generated the international trade data used in this analysis (available from SCC Consortium, 2020). Data availability statement: The results from this analysis have been submitted to the ReShare facility of the UK Data Archive (http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/).
Uncontrolled Keywords: climate change,ports,sea-level rise,trade scenarios,environmental science(all),earth and planetary sciences (miscellaneous),sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300
Faculty \ School: University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Collaborative Centre for Sustainable Use of the Seas
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 03 Nov 2022 11:30
Last Modified: 07 Jun 2024 12:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/89547
DOI: 10.1029/2020EF001543

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