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A major expansion of Europe's offshore wind capacity is on the horizon and Poland wants to be a leading player. The country aims to build 28 GW of new offshore wind capacity by 2050. A new report now finds that the upcoming global shortage of specialised offshore wind vessels might pose a risk for project execution in Poland and worldwide. Poland should see the shortage as an opportunity to build up a fleet of modern vessels to service national and international markets.

In the past few decades, ship-source GHG emissions have increased significantly. As a large country with massive shipping activities, China has issued a number of governmental policies with the aim of promoting shipping decarbonization and achieving green shipping. This study adopts the Policy Modeling Consistency Index (PMC-Index) approach to quantitatively evaluate 15 representative policies that are dealing with shipping decarbonization affairs to different extents in China. The results show that there exists an overall good policy consistency with the average PMC index scoring 6.26, but all studied policies have certain aspects to be further improved. By reviewing these representative policies, it reveals that more emphasis has been placed by the Chinese government on the development and application of clean energy, coordination between shipping and port industries, and governance mechanism for shipping decarbonisation issues. In addition, two policy implications are draw for policy-makers in China.

Maritime jurisdiction plays an important role in international trade and marine transport. It involves special kinds of rules that vary among different countries and legal systems. Thus, in international maritime jurisdiction, the coordination and settlements of jurisdictional conflicts are vital for the uniformity of international maritime law. This study provides a comparative analysis of maritime jurisdiction in international trade and marine transport. First, it introduces the concept, category, and legal characteristics of maritime jurisdiction based on historical sources. Then, we conduct a comparative analysis of the civil law system, common law system, international conventions, and Chinese maritime jurisdiction provisions, focusing on their differences and the existing legal problems. Among other suggestions for the improvement of the rules of maritime jurisdiction, this study proposes the unification and coordination of maritime jurisdiction, which could impact international trade and marine transport.

It's critical to understand the complexities of tightly bound actions and events of both people and nature, especially in times of crisis - most notably climate change and conflict between Russia and western countries.

Ports and neighbouring cities function as connectors between land and water and have long accommodated a substantial flow of goods and services. Port cities in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region and the Global South (GS) are rapidly and inevitably expanding as the demand for global trade increases. However, this expansion has numerous impacts on the surrounding marine ecosystem and the socio-economic livelihoods of local communities. We propose a framework to evaluate the sustainability of port cities in the WIO region and more broadly for cities in the GS. Through an exploratory approach, a systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken to identify existing themes on port city and marine ecosystem sustainability indicator frameworks. The results revealed a strong bias towards sustainability publications designed for port cities in Global North. The approach developed from this study focuses on the socio-economic and environmental attributes relevant to ports in the WIO region and for GS countries. This draws from the Drivers, Pressures, States, Impacts and Responses (DPSIR) framework and includes 78 indicators. The indicators are designed to identify and report on the complex land and sea interdependencies of port cities. To test the validity of these indicators their interdependencies were examined through a Causal Network (CN) structure which identified 12 priority DPSIR CN. These were also mapped to the UNSDGs enabling the wider applicability and transferability of the framework. The resulting framework enables port cities in emerging economies to establish robust sustainable reporting systems and provides a framework that offers a unique lens for evaluating interactions embedded in the land and sea continuum.

In last year's Arctic Report Card, experts provided indirect evidence that ship traffic is increasing in the Arctic: record amounts of foreign trash and marine debris like abandoned fishing gear are washing up in BERING Sea communities, and the underwater soundscape is getting louder. An essay in the 2022 Arctic Report Card reports direct evidence that ship traffic is increasing as sea ice dwindles-not just in near-shore, territorial waters of Arctic coastal countries, but increasingly, in the high seas of the Central Arctic Ocean.

Certain policies and policing measures taken by countries to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing drive local actors to engage in piracy, new research has found.

CSIRO and the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore will jointly deliver the initiative, which aims to accelerate the decarbonisation of the maritime sector of both countries.

Building a "Maritime Community with a Shared Future" (MCSF) is a maritime development concept with Chinese characteristics proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019. It is based on the rich cultural tradition and unique historical value of China's maritime civilization. It aims to solve real ocean problems and has outlined the future direction of human ocean development from the perspective of China. The essence of the MCSF is an issue of both ocean cultural and development concepts. It is a conceptual issue that transcends specific national boundaries and regions and is based on how all of humankind, with common interests and common values, can develop in harmony with the oceans. It is not a covert discourse strategy adopted by China in order to realize its "maritime power" ambition, as occasionally described by some Western countries. Starting with an analysis of the essential nature and implications of maritime culture by Chinese researchers, this article clarifies and summarizes the interaction, exchange, and integration of Chinese maritime culture in East Asia from a historical perspective, and extracts the unique characteristics and values of Chinese maritime culture. From the perspective of human-sea interactions, the three historical stages, as well as the existing problems of transforming and upgrading human-ocean culture, are analyzed. The article also contrasts Chinese and Western maritime cultures and proposes to absorb the outstanding achievements of both Chinese and Western maritime civilizations into a common framework in order to fundamentally reverse the antagonistic human-sea relationship that has existed historically. Finally, we propose giving full play to the fundamental role of marine cultural exchange and integration and, through international cooperation on specific issues in the field of global ocean international relations, propose specific and feasible practical pathways to promoting the realization of the MCSF.

The UK Border Force has returned a group of migrants to France after their small boat got into trouble in the English Channel. This appears to be a departure from past policy, at a crucial time. Channel crossings are rising again as the weather gets warmer, and remain a controversial part of migration discussions. The Conversation's Avery ANAPOL asked Alex BALCH, who researches migration and human rights at the University of Liverpool, what this episode means for the future of collaboration between the two countries on crossings.