Maritime Security: Adapting for Mid-century Challenges

Abstract

Maritime security can be expected to continue to develop and mature global and regional objectives and is a critical component to advance many of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. However, there are unknowns, impossible to properly prioritise in advance, that will surely appear. The Covid-19 impact on the maritime industry and broader global economy, at the time of this writing in 2020, is stark and omnipresent. Historically, geopolitics has been a major game changer, but in absence of an outright war, there has been a strong continuing trend to harmonise maritime security in international waters for well over a century. Climate change over the next 30 years may open new routes in previously ice-bound waters. Developments in new energy, mineral and other extractive industries in previously undeveloped regions are expected to drive new offshore and transit corridors bringing greater environmental risk, especially oil spill and emergency response challenges to regions sparse in infrastructure and response resources, such as the Arctic and the Antarctic littorals. The pace of this change, however, will most likely continue to be driven by market forces, often non-linear—which will challenge planners. Husbanding sufficient human and economic capital in reserve is prudent. Strategic thinkers on maritime security objectives should embrace the multi-causality of global challenges and remain nimble enough not to be entrapped by their assumptions.