Barriers of voyaging on the Northern Sea Route: A perspective from shipping Companies

Taedong Lee and Hyun Jung Kim

Marine Policy, 2015, vol. 62, issue C, 264-270

Abstract: Global climate change provides both risks and opportunities in the surrounding areas of the North Pole. Melting icebergs and glaciers increase the environmental risks to the ecosystem. Simultaneously the extraction of natural resources in the region and the use of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) seem easier than before. Those countries and companies that would utilize these opportunities have begun competing to take initiative for the development of the region. For instance, a Korean shipping company operated a test navigation between Russia and Korea through the NSR in 2013, while others did not. What are the drivers and barriers of sailing the NSR? This study aims to address this question by identifying the economic, external, and internal drivers and barriers to voyage through the NSR, from the perspective of shipping companies. Comparative case studies, using interviews and document analysis, suggest that the differences between shipping companies that consider voyaging the NSR mainly lie in companies' perceptions of economic opportunities and their internal factors. Despite economic and external policy barriers, a company's financial capacity and leadership played a key role to explore the new route, seeking potential of shipping resources from the Arctic region.

Keywords: Northern Sea Route; Arctic; Shipping company; Economic barriers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X15002572
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:marpol:v:62:y:2015:i:c:p:264-270

DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2015.09.006

Access Statistics for this article

Marine Policy is currently edited by Eddie Brown

More articles in Marine Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().