The social and environmental sustainability of the maritime industry

Although in the recent years the trend is changing, still few international academic papers on this topic are available. On the other hand, there is a total void by national academicians regarding the production of literature on social and environmental sustainability of the maritime industry in parallel as in multiple aspects related to the maritime chain and the supply chain management seen in its global assumptions. Nevertheless, sustainability in its different components – economical, social and environmental – is becoming a major concern for citizens, on the basis of participatory citizenship or as aggregated sources of social capital, public and private policy makers and governments. As concern about climate change grows and that the events of maritime disasters multiply, there is an entire industry, which despite of being vital to the world economy and for the welfare of the people, continues to be managed in a way that requires no more regulation but their actual application. An industry for the future but at the same time one that largely contributes to emissions and several forms of air and marine pollution and which cannot continue to use the planet seas and oceans as sewage. Thus, we chose to extract from scratch the fundamentals through elaborate work of collecting and analysing institutional information and by unroll the intricate web that this issue, being transversal to the entire maritime industry, incorporates. So we focused on the norms and laws issued by agencies and sectoral organizations of regulatory nature and the methodology is based in the paradoxical confrontation between occurrences and existing legislation.