Can Regional Cooperation Promote Sustainable Development?

This chapter argues that regional cooperation may be a promising framework to work towards sustainable development. There are two broad pathways linking regional cooperation and sustainable development. On the one hand, shared or transboundary socio-environmental concerns may spark regional cooperation and on the other, pre-existing regional organisations created for other purposes become frameworks to address sustainability concerns. Yet, neither of these processes is automatic and whether they take place depends on the existence of particular drivers pursuing a sustainability agenda at the regional level. Ultimately, whether regional cooperation fosters sustainable development and how this takes place thus depends to a large extent on the specific people or organisations driving a sustainability agenda at the regional level and their relationship to national governments.

A life cycle framework for governance of Intermodal terminals; planning, operations and strategic management.

This chapter establishes a framework for the governance of intermodal terminals throughout their life cycle, based on the product life cycle. The framework covers the initial planning by the public sector, the public/private split in funding and ownership, the selection of an operator, ensuring fair access to all users, and finally reconcessioning the terminal to a new operator, managing the handover and maintaining the terminal throughout its life cycle. This last point is especially important as industry conditions change and the terminal's role in the transport network comes under threat, either by a lack of demand or by increased demand requiring expansion, redesign and reinvestment. Each stage of the life cycle framework is operationalised based on empirical examples drawn from research by the authors on intermodal terminal planning and funding, the tender process and concession and operation contracts. In future the framework can be applied in additional international contexts to form a basis for transport cost analysis, logistics planning and government policy.