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SusPort Project: Seaports cooperate cross-border for environmental sustainability

Antonio Dallara

Antonio Dallara

Project Manager and senior researcher at Institute for Transport and Logistics

“SUStainable PORTs”, or SusPort for short, is a project among ports along the Adriatic coast to enhance their environmental sustainability, decarbonisation and energy efficiency in the Eusair Area – from Trieste to Bari, from Rijeka to Dubrovnik. It is a strategic project of the Italy-Croatia CBC Programme within the European Union’s “Interreg V-A” programme and will be completed by this June.

SusPort involves 17 partners across the region. It has enabled ports to address environmental impacts of their activities in collaborative manners, seeking common solutions to common problems. In a first time, they drafted a “territorial needs assessment”, analysing status quo. Later they adopted a common model of cross-border planning, implemented in each port through a local action plan for enhancing its green sustainability, and then tested concrete pilot actions, identified in a best practice analysis.

They include: replacement of the existing lightning system with LED light bulbs; installation of photovoltaic systems; implementation of e-mobility measures; installations of sensors and stations to monitor noise, air and water quality.

Based on the lessons learnt, last June the ports signed a protocol in Trieste for the application of a joint cross-border strategy in this area, thus harmonizing policies in the long term, with benefits for their territories. SusPort is the first project bringing together the relevant ports, regional entities, academic and research institutions of the Eusair Area, resulting in the first joint cross-border strategy, including cross-border multidisciplinary and institutional multilevel cooperation.