Strategic Governance and Sustainable Logistics

This book reframes sustainable logistics as a strategic governance challenge, integrating economic, social, and environmental dimensions within a single analytical narrative. Using the Baltic Sea region as a comparative laboratory, it highlights the trade-offs between decarbonisation, competitiveness, and resilience, while applying a foresight-based approach to explore alternative pathways to the year 2040. It proposes a cohesive strategic governance framework for sustainable logistics, linking political economy, critical infrastructure theory, and green transition dynamics into a coherent systematic perspective. The book argues that logistics systems can no longer be understood primarily through cost optimisation alone. They function as critical infrastructure where sustainability, security of supply, and economic resilience are structurally interconnected. While the Baltic Sea region serves as the empirical anchor, the book distinguishes between context-specific vulnerabilities and generalisable strategic dilemmas relevant beyond the region. References to other European and global regions further indicate its broader relevance. A foresight perspective is used to explore alternative development pathways for sustainable logistics to the year 2040. Scenarios are constructed around clearly defined driving forces and key uncertainties, including geopolitical stability, energy transition, technological acceleration (including digitalisation, automation, and AI-driven logistics systems), regulatory coordination, and systemic shocks. The analysis explicitly acknowledges the limits of scenario-based reasoning and avoids predictive claims. By combining regional strategy, governance analysis, and scenario-based foresight in a concise, policy-relevant format, the book offers a timely and distinctive contribution for researchers, scholars and students in economics, regional development, sustainability and transport studies, as well as, policymakers, and practitioners engaged in Europe’s green transition.