Seaports participation in enhancing the sustainable development goals

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda encourages and establishes initiatives that are important to society. In this sense it is vital and valuable to adapt these initiatives on a sectoral basis. Therefore this study aims to handle sustainability issues at ports within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) framework. Two targets were set. The first target is addressing the attention of European ports' sustainability disclosures to SDGs. The second target is to develop a comprehensive framework of port related sustainability initiatives to support the achievement of SDG targets. This paper is based upon a qualitative content analysis study. To consolidate the best practices European Ports were selected as the research area. First this study contributes to the extension of the UNSDG and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicator framework with port specific aspects. Therefore it provides a comprehensive picture of port-related actions linked to each SDG goal. Secondly it provides evidence of how European ports are aligned with SDGs. The results revealed that the port industry has the potential to contribute mainly to SDGs 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth, 9 Industry Innovation and Infrastructure, 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities 12 Responsible Consumption and Pro-duction 13 Climate Action and 17 Partnership.