Trade Winds

How can we build greener infrastructure in the face of the global climate emergency? In Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping (Manchester UP, 2023), Christiaan De Beukelaer, a Senior Lecturer in Culture and Climate at the University of Melbourne intertwines an indepth analysis of modern shipping, with a memoir of being aboard a sailing ship during the 2020 pandemic. The book is a fascinating read, with both an extensive critique of the failures of the global shipping and trade system to be sustainable, as well as offering moving insights into a unique experience of a very different form of 2020’s lockdown. Concluding with both the return to land, and a detailed consideration of how shipping, trade, and the world might adapt to the climate crisis, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in a sustainable future for the planet.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.