“Small Ports, Big Pressures”: Exploring the Emerging Sustainability and Resilience Obtacles in Malaysia’s Non-Major Ports

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_13How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Port Resilience; Port Sustainability; Thematic Analysis; PESTLE; Non-Major Ports

Abstract

The Non-major ports, though smaller in capacity, play a critical role in strengthening Malaysia’s regional connectivity and sustaining trade competitiveness. Yet, their pursuit of resilience and sustainability is increasingly constrained by a complex operational, regulatory, and environmental maritime landscape. This study investigates the emerging obstacles faced by Malaysia’s non-major ports in advancing resilience and sustainability goals. Adopting a qualitative research design, expert insights were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using a hybrid thematic approach supported by the PESTLE framework. The analysis identified 18 interrelated obstacles spanning political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal dimensions. These findings reveal how governance fragmentation, financial limitations, workforce capacity gaps, digital divides, environmental vulnerabilities, and regulatory burdens collectively hinder progress toward resilient and sustainable port operations. By systematically mapping these obstacles, the study contributes to the literature on port development and offers valuable insights to policymakers, port authorities, and industry stakeholders seeking to design integrated strategies that strengthen the resilience and sustainability of Malaysia’s non major ports.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Mohammad Khairuddin Othman
AU  - Hakim Hasnan
AU  - Noor Apandi Osnin
AU  - Chuah Lai Fatt
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/28
TI  - “Small Ports, Big Pressures”: Exploring the Emerging Sustainability and Resilience Obtacles in Malaysia’s Non-Major Ports
BT  - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Business, Accounting, Finance and Economics (BAFE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 148
EP  - 162
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_13
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_13
ID  - Othman2025
ER  -