Impacts of Terrorism and Piracy on Maritime Activities: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The international community is paying more and more attention to the activities of terrorists and pirates, which have greatly hindered the flow of international seaborne trade and other maritime activities. Many national governments have implemented certain security policies to address the twin problem of terrorism and piracy with minimal results achieved. The researchers propose that policy effective response models for addressing these security problems must be based on quantitative analysis of impacts of terrorism and piracy on the affected maritime domain. This paper assessed impacts of terrorism and piracy on maritime related economic activities in Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The data for this study comprised volume of crude oil production, quantity of crude oil in tanker vessels lost to terrorism acts and the quantity of fish catch/production over a period of fifteen years (2000-2015). We employed Linear Regression Analysis model to determine significant correlations between pairs of economic variables in the study. Findings showed that significant inverse relationship exists between the selected maritime related economic activities and acts of maritime terrorism and piracy. Policy implications of the results were discussed.