Abstract:

It is widely recognized that sustainability plays important role in any system of supply chains. Sustainability is also an important issue for the port industry as nodes in supply chains. The purpose of this research is to gain better understanding of sustainable port system. Further specific objective of this study is to contribute to the sustainable port systems’ literature by analyzing the drivers and barriers for sustainable ports. We review sustainable supply chain literature in addition to the sustainable port literature with emphasis on drivers and barriers of sustainability in port systems.  We concentrate on sustainability in economic, environmental and social dimensions with the perspective of the Triple-Bottom-Line approach. Thus, we decompose the drivers and barriers for sustainable port systems in economic, environmental and social dimensions. By this decomposition, we assess the balance of the sustainable port literature in these dimensions. We observed that drivers concentrate on environmental sustainability issues and barriers concentrate on economic sustainability issues in sustainable port literature.

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