Enhancing National Shipping and Logistics through Ocean Consciousness: A Case of Indonesia from a Sociocultural Perspective

Maritime connectivity in shipping and logistics is essential in the era of global maritime nexus, especially for archipelagic countries. Effectively connecting goods and people is critical to the prosperity of the economy and the nation. To achieve that, there is a need to develop maritime infrastructure and enhance the nation’s ocean consciousness through investing in ocean literacy and sociocultural learning. The investment in people eventually will lead to the development a national maritime identity. This paper reports on a case study research of Indonesia. Recently, the country has shifted its policy orientation from land to maritime development with the vision of the Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF). However, Indonesian logistics supply chains face severe challenges, such as price disparity and high logistics costs between the western and eastern parts of the country. Although the government has developed its national maritime strategy, it has not yet placed the country as a powerful maritime nation. Our data shows the gap in ocean consciousness between the stakeholders-professionals and the general public, especially in the basic knowledge of shipping and logistics. This research examines the gap by analysing the sociocultural learning potential for ocean consciousness development in maritime logistics and shipping. Ocean consciousness is a comprehensive understanding and awareness of the ocean and maritime affairs that internalise the ocean culture through ocean education. A sociocultural perspective is utilised to examine ocean consciousness, incorporated with cognition in distributed settings as a theoretical framework. The research applied the qualitative method and collected data from related stakeholders through interviews and focus groups. The findings show that the ocean consciousness in logistics and shipping is underrated. The existing ocean education is focused on ocean sustainability rather than shipping and maritime logistics. The study concludes with two recommendations for reaching the desired ocean consciousness toward enhanced and sustainable maritime logistics and shipping. First, the public needs to be educated about maritime logistics and shipping. Second, the public needs to be encouraged to engage in logistics and shipping activities. These will result in a wider public involvement with ocean affairs and shipping activities and the development of public understanding of ocean consciousness.