Best practices in ESG: a benchmarking for Brazilian seaports sustainability journey

Abstract This essay reviews and contextualizes the Best Practices Guide for Port Sustainability: An ESG Strategy (2023), a pioneering initiative aimed at institutionalizing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles within Brazil’s port system. Developed through a collaborative effort among the Federal University of Maranhão, the Association of Private Port Terminals (ATP), and the Brazilian Association of Port and Waterway Entities (ABEPH), the guide addresses a critical gap in port governance by offering a structured ESG framework tailored to the operational and regulatory realities of both private and public terminals. Its methodological foundation is an eleven-step process that integrates regulatory analysis, stakeholder interviews, digital content analysis, and benchmarking, resulting in a typology of best practices organized across six core categories: Policies, Plans, Programs, Projects, Processes, and Partnerships. We highlight the guide’s implications for port management, policy, and education in ESG application in the Brazilian sea port development. We emphasize that this ESG Guide could contribute to the emerging literature on ESG integration in maritime infrastructure by proposing a dynamic “Port Sustainability Journey” model adapted to the organizational maturity regarding ESG. Ultimately, we consider the potential for the ESG Guide 2023 to be a foundational step toward embedding sustainability into the core of maritime infrastructure planning and management in Brazil. Nevertheless, we also identify that additional research is required to address gaps in the benchmarking and applicability of the best practices, considering the particularities and the complexity of the ports’ stakeholders and their port-city relations in the Brazilian context.