Feasibility of commercial cargo shipping along the Northern Sea Route
At least over the past two centuries, the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a link connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through Russian Arctic territorial waters, has attracted seafarers willing to test its potential for delivering shorter and faster voyages. Traditionally maritime activity along the...
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| Language: | English |
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University of Turku
2022
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| Online Access: | https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/161816 http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-29-6691-2 |
| Summary: | At least over the past two centuries, the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a link connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through Russian Arctic territorial waters, has attracted seafarers willing to test its potential for delivering shorter and faster voyages. Traditionally maritime activity along the NSR has been constrained by a harsh climate, including perennial ice-cover and sub-zero temperatures. In recent decades, climate change has entailed improving climate conditions for shipping in the form of receding Arctic Sea ice-cover. This has turned the focus towards the Arctic region as a whole, mostly linked to its abundant reserves of natural resources. In many respects, climate change has reactivated interest in the NSR as a route for accessing natural resource riches and transcontinental shipping shortcuts between Europe and Asia. Despite the significant multi-level attention focused on the NSR, an understanding of its feasibility is far from being conclusive, which has resulted in varying conclusions in the media and extant literature. This research aims to produce a holistic, fact-based and unbiased view on the feasibility of commercial cargo shipping along the NSR from the point-of-view of ship owners. The main research question investigates under what conditions commercial cargo shipping along the NSR could become feasible. It is divided into three separate research sub-questions, which focus on: i) economic viability; ii) infrastructure and related services; and iii) market potential. The system-like characteristics of the phenomenon in question entail the positioning of the thesis in the categories of critical realism and pragmatism, with the emphasis on the former. The research approach has elements of constructive and system orientations, while the logic of inquiry relies on abductive reasoning with descriptive, normative and pragmatic features. The thesis consists of five separate articles and the concluding summary, which contains new empirical data. The summary concludes with the findings of the ... |
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