Maritime transport and regional climate change impacts in large EU islands and archipelagos

Abstract

Maritime transport is a vital sector for global trade and the world economy. Particularly for islands, there is also an important social dimension of this sector, since island communities strongly rely on it for a connection with the mainland and the transportation of goods and passengers. Furthermore, islands are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, as the rising sea level and extreme events are expected to induce severe impacts. Such hazards are anticipated to also affect the operations of the maritime transport sector by affecting either the port infrastructure or ships en route. The present study is an effort to better comprehend and assess the future risk of maritime transport disruption in six European islands and archipelagos, and it aims at supporting regional to local policy and decision-making. We employ state-of-the-art regional climate datasets and the widely used impact chain approach to identify the different components that might drive such risks. Larger islands (e.g., Corsica, Cyprus and Crete) are found to be more resilient to the impacts of climate change on maritime operations. Our findings also highlight the importance of adopting a low-emission pathway, since this will keep the risk of maritime transport disruption similar to present levels or even slightly decreased for some islands because of an enhanced adaptation capacity and advantageous demographic changes.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41207-023-00370-6.

Keywords: Blue economy; Climate change; Impacts; Islands; Maritime transport; Mediterranean.

Fig. 1

Locations of the six islands and archipelagos under investigation (from west to east: Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Corsica, Malta, Crete and Cyprus)

Fig. 2

Conceptualization framework for the impact chain operationalization for the risk of isolation due to maritime transport disruption

Fig. 3

Projected mean sea level rises with respect to the 1986–2005 reference period for six European islands and archipelagos under two future emission pathways

Fig. 4

Hazard (H), Exposure (E) and Vulnerability (V) components and relative risk (R) values for the risk of maritime transport disruption in Cyprus during the historical reference period and two future periods under pathways RCP2.6 and RCP8.5

Fig. 5

Hazard (H), Exposure (E) and Vulnerability (V) components and relative risk (R) values for the risk of maritime transport disruption in Crete during the historical reference period and two future periods under pathways RCP2.6 and RCP8.5

Fig. 6

Hazard (H), Exposure (E) and Vulnerability (V) components and relative risk (R) values for the risk of maritime transport disruption in Malta during the historical reference period and two future periods under pathways RCP2.6 and RCP8.5

Fig. 7

Hazard (H), Exposure (E) and Vulnerability (V) components and relative risk (R) values for the risk of maritime transport disruption in Corsica during the historical reference period and two future periods under pathways RCP2.6 and RCP8.5

Fig. 8

Hazard (H), Exposure (E) and Vulnerability (V) components and relative risk (R) values for the risk of maritime transport disruption in the Canary Islands during the historical reference period and two future periods under pathways RCP2.6 and RCP8.5

Fig. 9

Hazard (H), Exposure (E) and Vulnerability (V) components and relative risk (R) values for the risk of maritime transport disruption in the Balearic Islands during the historical reference period and two future periods under pathways RCP2.6 and RCP8.5