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Recent trends in port development show that ports are making increasing efforts to forge mutually beneficial cooperation strategies, particularly ports sharing a common hinterland. In this paper, we analyse the North Adriatic ports (Koper, Rijeka, Trieste and Venice) with a focus on two related themes. First, the complementarity of the North Adriatic (NA) ports in the container market is analysed based on port vessel service patterns and shipping line interviews. We operationalize the analysis of complementarity with an analysis of the effects of multiple port calls on the revenue required to make a call in a specific NA port economically feasible. We conclude that the inclusion of another NA port reduces the minimum required revenue for a call in an additional NA port. Second, we assess the scope and depth of cooperation between ports. We map current and potential future cooperation using a 'cooperation matrix' with two dimensions: the involvement of stakeholders (limited vs. broad), and the depth of cooperation (pre-competitive vs. commercial). We use in-depth interviews with port authorities, terminal operators, rail operators, major shipping lines and forwarders in the NA region to position the NA ports in the matrix. We conclude by discussing prospects of future NAPA ports cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of seven large landlord port authorities around the world reveals a notable diversity of pricing structures. While port authorities increasingly act as commercial undertakings, port pricing often seems to be not driven by commercial considerations. In this paper, we argue that ports can be regarded as 'business ecosystems' with multiple users. This provides a valuable perspective on pricing and raises the question of whether ports can be regarded as two-sided markets. We argue this is not the case. The business ecosystem perspective provides a basis for deducing seven pricing principles for port authorities that are detailed in the paper and illustrated with cases these principles. These pricing principles are broadly follow a direct user pays approach; capture value from 'non-core' tenants; price aggressively for activities with a high strategic value; differentiate pricing based on price elasticity and connectivity improvements; maximize revenue from long-term lease agreements, price port dues competitively; critically consider differentiation of charges based on environmental performance; and finally use incentives to align interests of terminal operators and shipping lines. We conclude that the ecosystem perspective is central to the understanding of pricing decisions of port authorities and that various pricing issues deserve more attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last interglacial climate was influenced by substantial changes in the annual insolation cycle that led to a warmer climate state with pronounced high northern latitude warming. We analyze the impact of the insolation changes 125,000 years before present using an equilibrium snapshot simulation with the EC-Earth coupled climate model at high spatial resolution. Using additional atmosphere-only simulations, we separate the direct impact from the changed insolation from the secondary contribution from changed sea surface conditions. These simulations are forced with a combination of last interglacial sea surface temperatures and sea ice conditions and pre-industrial insolation, and vice versa. The coupled simulation yields an annual mean global warming of approximately 0.5 °C compared to pre-industrial conditions. While the warming over the continents follows the annual cycle of the insolation anomalies, two regions exhibit persistent responses throughout the year: The tropical region exhibits lower temperatures and stronger monsoonal systems, while the Arctic region shows a warming of more than 2 °C in all seasons. The hybrid simulations reveal that the changed sea surface conditions dominate the response at high northern latitudes, including the North Atlantic region and Europe, while the direct insolation impact is more dominant in the tropics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transport sector accounts for 25% of the global CO2emissions. All firms in the transport industry share a responsibility for this environmental impact. This paper explores, as one of the first, the attitude of both shippers and forwarders, as the main purchasers of transport services, towards environmental sustainability in the sourcing of transport services. Based on a literature review we develop several hypotheses and test those through a survey among shippers and forwarders in the Netherlands. We conclude that shippers focus more on sustainability than forwarders, the size of shippers has a positive influence on the demand for transparency of the environmental performance, explicit sustainability targets have a positive influence on the demand for sustainable solutions and the vast majority of shippers and forwarders expect an increased importance of sustainable purchasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that much of the literature on port governance takes the embeddedness of the port authority in the public sector as a given, whereas we argue that port development is intrinsically commercial and it is thus appropriate to regard a port authority as a port development company. In line with this, we provide a critique of the term ‘port authority’. Next, we describe the cases of the Dutch seaports as an illustration of the transition away from ‘authority’ and towards a model with state owned port development companies (PDCs). The following topics are addressed: the changing institutional position of the port development companies, the legal status of the PDCs, the financial performance of the Dutch PDCs and the commercial activities of the PDCs. Finally, we address the changing approach to small scale port development in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrestrial freshwater runoff strongly influences physical and biogeochemical processes at the fjord scale and can have global impacts when considered at the Greenland scale. We investigate the performance of the HIRHAM5 regional climate model over the catchments delivering freshwater to Tyrolerfjord and Young Sound by comparing to the unique Greenland Ecological Monitoring database of in situ observations from this region. Based on these findings, we estimate and discuss the fraction of runoff originating from glacierized and non-glacierized land delivered at the daily scale between 1996 and 2008. We find that glaciers contributed on average 50-80% of annual terrestrial runoff when considering different sections of Tyrolerfjord-Young Sound, but snowpack depletion on land and consequently runoff happens about one month earlier in the model than observed in the field. The temporal shift in the model is a likely explanation why summer surface salinity in the inner fjord did not correlate to modelled runoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]