Arctic shipping: Economic and environmental assessments

• Main Author: Theocharis, Dimitrios
• Other Authors: Goodsite, Michael, Swanström, Niklas
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: World Scientific 2023
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/159469/; https://doi.org/10.1142/9781800613225_0006

Arctic shipping research has grown rapidly across various disciplines, with comparative studies evaluating the potential of Arctic routes demonstrating a significant increase since the 2010s. A systematic review is conducted to examine the literature on comparative studies reporting cost and emissions assessments between the Arctic and traditional routes. The review is undertaken at the micro-economic level of analysis. A systematic review involves the identification, selection and critical appraisal, and synthesis of the extant literature. Review questions are formulated and specific search terms are used in databases to obtain relevant studies. A synthesis of the findings is attempted in order to identify emerging themes and key results. 46 peer-reviewed papers published from 1980 to 2021 (as of April) were selected and included in the review. The results show that the Arctic routes appear to be more suitable for bulk and/or specialized shipping rather than liner shipping in the short to medium term. As regards environmental assessments, these depend on the methodological approach used to estimate emissions, the time horizon, as well as other factors, such as taxation, environmental costs, and air pollution. Future research could consider other routes, wider geographical implications, alternative fuels, climate models, stakeholders’ perceptions, as well as diverse scenarios and assumptions in the cost modeling approaches.