Ports: Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change

If you are less than 30 years old (on January 1st, 2021) and are interested in maritime and port issues, you may want to cooperate (pro-bono) with us. Gliese Foundation is a European foundation focused on maritime sustainability, the marine environment, and the impact of climate change. We have developed several projects: a) independent reviews on environmental reporting by shipping companies, b) best maritime picture of the day, and c) poetry as a tool to express the science behind climate change, and will be developing more. Now, we are launching a new project on our website, and if you meet the two requirements we mentioned in the first sentence and have the skill to do research and the ability to write, you may want to contribute with us.

We have noticed that there are already several international initiatives to green the ports of the world. They cover a wide range of environmental issues related to ports. We value that effort greatly, but at the same time, we have noticed that there is not a global initiative focused on the most critical dual challenge of the future: climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation by ports. The first topic is often included among the many environmental issues, but the second rarely appears despite the world's ports could be some of the most valuable infrastructure assets impacted by climate change. Our purpose, therefore, is to highlight specific actions that ports in developed, emerging, and developing countries are implementing in order not only to reduce GHG emissions, such as the use of renewable energy, electric cranes, or cold ironing but also to adapt to the impact of climate change.

Therefore, we will be accepting essays by young maritime and port researchers about case studies of specific measures being taken by some ports in their countries. Each of the essays should tackle one or, at most, two of the measures that a particular port is applying to reduce GHG emissions or adapt better to the ongoing and growing impact of climate change. The essays could mention studies about the topic by other authors, but the bulk of the essay must be on real case studies. Environmental projects by ports not related to climate change will not be considered for publication.

If ports in your country are not taking measures to cope with climate change, you can analyze the case of one port and one or two actions that the port should execute. In those cases, it would be important that the essay demonstrate why a particular action can be done and suits a particular port, not simply referring to actions put into effect in other countries and saying that they could also be implemented in your own country.

The better researched are the essays (e.g., documents, interviews, numbers), the more probability the essays will have to be accepted for publication on this website. However, any document, interview or numbers, should be used only to enrich the storytelling of the essay, not to replace it. In other words, we will not publish summaries of documents, annual reports, or interviews as such. We need to see that there is a significant contribution from the author. That is why the deeper the analysis by the author, the higher the probability that her or his essay will be accepted.

The essays should be original and have an extension between 2,500 and 4,000 words (more or less between 5 and 8 pages), and the authors should follow the guidelines we mention below, extracted from the website of UNCTAD for its contributors. If you have any doubt, please send us your questions by email before starting your research, mainly if you are not sure that the measure you want to analyze belongs to climate change mitigation or adaptation.

Any plagiarism will immediately disqualify the paper, and we will not receive any additional proposals by the same author. Hence, any repetition of a paragraph, sentence or fragment from another study should be clearly quoted.

Once we have published three essays from one author, we will designate her or him as Maritime Envoy of Gliese Foundation for her or his country for one year, and we will issue and deliver an old-style wax-sealed certification. It will be just a recognition without any privileges or conditions attached. There could be more than one Maritime Envoy per country.

The following guidelines for contributors have been taken from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) website. We have deleted those parts that we are not requiring (the original text can be found at UNCTAD website at the following link: https://unctad.org/Topic/Investment/Transnational-Corporations-Journal/Guidelines-for-Contributors

"Guidelines for Contributors

Papers for publication must be in English

"Authors are requested to submit their manuscript by email to [researchCgliesefoundation.org] The manuscript should be prepared using Microsoft Word, accompanied by a statement that the text (or parts thereof) has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

"All papers should include an abstract not exceeding 150 words. The word count includes abstract, text, endnotes, references, tables, figures and appendices. Footnotes should be placed at the bottom of the page they refer to. An alphabetical list of references should appear at the end of the manuscript. Appendices, tables and figures should be on separate sheets of paper and placed at the end of the manuscript.

"Manuscripts should be single-spaced (including references) with wide margins. Pages should be numbered consecutively. The first page of the manuscript should contain: (i) title; (ii) name(s) and institutional affiliation(s) of the author(s) [if any]; and (iii) mailing address, email address, telephone number of the author (or primary author, if more than one).

"[Gliese Foundation] holds the copyright for all published articles. Authors may reuse published manuscripts with due acknowledgment.

"Quotations should be accompanied by the page number(s) from the original source.

"Footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the text with Arabic-numeral superscripts. Important substantive comments should be integrated in the text itself rather than placed in footnotes.

"Figures (charts, graphs, illustrations, etc.) should have headers, subheaders, labels and full sources. Footnotes to figures should be preceded by lowercase letters and should appear after the sources. Figures should be numbered consecutively. The position of figures in the text should be indicated as follows:

"Tables should have headers, subheaders, column headers and full sources. Table headers should indicate the year(s) of the data, if applicable. The unavailability of data should be indicated by two dots (..). If data are zero or negligible, this should be indicated by a dash (-). Footnotes to tables should be preceded by lowercase letters and should appear after the sources. Tables should be numbered consecutively. The position of tables in the text should be indicated as follows:

"Abbreviations should be avoided whenever possible.

"Bibliographical references in the text should appear as: "John Dunning (1979) reported that ...", or "This finding has been widely supported in the literature (Cantwell, 1991, p. 19)". The author(s) should ensure that there is a strict correspondence between names and years appearing in the text and those appearing in the list of references. All citations in the list of references should be complete. Names of journals should not be abbreviated.

"The following are examples for most citations:

"Bhagwati, Jagdish (1988). Protectionism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

"Cantwell, John (1991). "A survey of theories of international production", in Christos N. Pitelis and Roger Sugden, eds., The Nature of the Transnational Firm (London: Routledge), pp. 16-63.

"Dunning, John H. (1979). "Explaining changing patterns of international production: in defence of the eclectic theory", Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 41 (November), pp. 269-295.

"All manuscripts accepted for publication will be edited."

Gliese Foundation,

December 19th, 2020

research@gliesefoundation.org