Environmental Governance for Marine Infrastructure: Enabling and Constraining Conditions for Ecodynamic Development and Design in Marine Infrastructural Projects

Ports are crucial in the economic growth of the marine sector, but a growing awareness on the adverse ecological implications influences their development. Ecodynamic development and design (EDD) is an innovative approach with the aim to integrate the economic aspects of port development projects with dynamics of marine ecosystems. These projects develop within different governance settings, therefore not only different types of project arrangements develop, but there is also a difference in the possibilities for ecodynamic design. Based on an analysis of 28 port development projects, we distinguish four ideal-typical Marine Infrastructural Project Arrangements (MIPAs): Conventional, Integrated market, External Financier initiated and Private. These arrangements differ from each other on the actors involved, the rules applied, the division of resources and the discourse set. Due to these differences, we formulate enabling and constraining conditions of the project arrangement to incorporate ecodynamic design principles in terms of marine infrastructural projects. The possibilities for EDD in these MIPAs increase if there is space for contractors, consultants and project owners to (co)develop the design. The analysis shows that the ‘Integrated Market’ and ‘Private’ project arrangements are best capable of incorporating EDD port development projects.