Around 70% of our planet is covered by water. Just as human activities on land require planning, planning is also needed at sea. How can the space at sea be allocated to activities for use and protection in a space-saving way? How can we think across the different sectors so that marine planning is more coherent? These are questions that I am working to answer in my Ph.D. at Aalborg University, Copenhagen.
Marine space is overall under increasing pressures from human activities. Traditionally, the activities taken place in oceans and seas were related to fisheries and transport of goods and people. Today, offshore energy production – oil, gas, and wind, aquaculture, and sea-based tourism are important contributors to the global economy. This creates competition and conflicts between various uses and requires an overall regulation and planning. Maritime activities generate pressures on the marine ecosystems, and in many areas severe impacts can be observed. Maritime spatial planning is seen as an instrument to manage the seas and oceans in a more sustainable way, but information and tools are needed. The current paper describes a tool to assess the cumulative impacts of maritime activities on the marine ecosystems combined with a tool to assess the conflicts and synergies between these activities.
Ocean acidification (OA) is a global problem with profoundly negative environmental, social and economic consequences. From a governance perspective, there is a
need to ensure a coordinated effort to directly address it. This study reviews 90 legislative documents from 17 countries from the European Economic Area (EEA) and
the UK that primarily border the sea. The primary finding from this study is that the European national policies and legislation addressing OA is at best uncoordinated. Although OA is acknowledged at the higher levels of governance, its status as an environmental challenge is greatly diluted at the European Union Member
State level. As a notable exception within the EEA, Norway seems to have a proactive approach towards legislative frameworks and research aimed towards further
understanding OA. On the other hand, there was a complete lack of, or inadequate reporting in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive by the majority of the EU
Member States, with the exception of Italy and the Netherlands. We argue that the problems associated with OA and the solutions needed to address it are unique and
cannot be bundled together with traditional climate change responses and measures. Therefore, European OA-related policy and legislation must reflect this and
tailor their actions to mitigate OA to safeguard marine ecosystems and societies. A stronger and more coordinated approach is needed to build environmental,
economic and social resilience of the observed and anticipated changes to the coastal marine systems.
The purpose of this paper is to assess the status and prospects of the decarbonization of maritime transport. Already more than two years have passed since the landmark decision of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in April 2018, which entailed ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships. The paper attempts to address the following three questions: (a) where do we stand with respect to GHG emissions from ships, (b) how is the Initial IMO Strategy progressing, and (c) what should be done to move ahead? To that effect, our methodology includes commenting on some of the key issues addressed by the recently released 4th IMO GHG study, assessing progress at the IMO since 2018, and finally identifying other issues that we consider relevant and important as regards maritime GHG emissions, such as for instance the role of the European Green Deal and how this may interact with the IMO process. Even though the approach of the paper is to a significant extent qualitative, some key quantitative and modelling aspects are considered as well. On the basis of our analysis, our main conjecture is that there is not yet light at the end of the tunnel with respect to decarbonizing maritime transport.
The power to regulate on-board protection of merchant vessels lies with the flag state. However, the national models of regulation are not developed in a unilateral vacuum. In fact, the whole concept of flag state jurisdiction and legislative power has to be understood and exercised on the national level in close relation with the general regime of the international law of the sea. The aim of the article is therefore two-fold: first, it aims to provide a background for the country reports in this special issue by giving a brief insight into the problem of piracy in the twenty-first century and the international approaches towards this problem. Here the article also provides an insight into the legal background by presenting the concept of piracy in the law of the sea and connected law enforcement powers. Thus, this part of the article provides the overall context in which the discussions concerning on-board protection and the development of national regulations have occurred. Second, the article analyses the issue of on-board protection from the perspective of the legal framework in international law, as well as relevant international soft-law instruments, influencing the development on the national level. On-board protection of vessels as such is not regulated in the international law; however, international law provides a form of general legal setting, in which flags states navigate. Thus, this article aims to draw a picture of the international context in which flags states develop their specific legal approach.
Among the spectrum of logistics – based measures for sustainable shipping, this chapter focuses on speed optimization. This involves the selection of an appropriate speed by the vessel, so as to optimize a certain objective. As ship speed is not fixed, depressed shipping markets and/or high fuel prices induce slow steaming which is being practised in many sectors of the shipping industry. In recent years the environmental dimension of slow steaming has also become important, as ship emissions are directly proportional to fuel burned. Win-win solutions are sought, but they will not necessarily be possible. The chapter presents some basics, discusses the main trade-offs and also examines combined speed and route optimization problems. Some examples are presented so as to highlight the main issues that are at play, and the regulatory dimension of speed reduction via speed limits is also discussed.
Maritime medicine deals with the health of seafarers, fishermen, and offshore employees and, more specifically, with their employment, working and living conditions, and their health and safety at sea. Maritime doctors should have the appropriate training and competencies to provide the equivalent service as would be found on land. This review discusses a) the required skills and competencies of maritime doctors and b) explores the associated ongoing discussions for the establishment of a global accredited Masters programme in maritime health. A literature review was conducted using 2 databases: PubMed and Google scholar. Search terms included: maritime doctors, maritime medicine, occupational health, and skills and competencies. Literature published between 1990 and 2018 was prioritised. Thirty-five articles that discussed the skills, competencies, and education of maritime doctors and health professionals were retrieved, reviewed, and discussed, plus 8 reports and documents from relevant International Organisations webpages. We explored policies in relation to training using i) the health triangle and ii) the Kingdon model. Doctors who serve in the sector should have extensive knowledge about medical practice, but also about the environment of seafaring. The complexity of their roles, coupled with the provision of a high quality of services in global shipping, call for high quality accredited training and harmonisation of maritime health practices. The analysis of policy, using 2 policy models, showed that a window of opportunity appears to be in favour of a policy regarding the recognition of maritime medicine as a medical specialisation. International stakeholders, together with the International Maritime Health Association, should actively advocate such a perspective which will be in favour of seafarers, who will enjoy better health and wellbeing, with higher income while avoiding ill-health, as well as the shipping industry, which will employ satisfied and loyal employees, and will enjoy a higher reputation.
The 0.1% limit in sulphur content within Sulphur Emission Control Areas as of 1st January 2015 requires that ship operators either use pricier ultra-low sulphur fuel oil, or alternatively install abatement technologies through substantial capital investments. A part of the resulting higher operating costs are passed on to shippers resulting in increased freight rates. These may lead to modal shifts towards rail or road options competing with Ro-Ro operators. Due to the unexpectedly low fuel prices in the period 2014–2016, Ro-Ro operators were relatively unharmed by the new limits, but nascent research has shown that if fuel prices increase some Ro-Ro services may not survive. This paper examines a set of policy options that can mitigate or reverse the negative effects of the low-sulphur regulation. The measures include internalizing external costs of transport, repaying fuel surcharges to shippers, subsidizing technological investments of ship operators, or increasing the landbased costs of transport via levies. To compare their efficacy, total costs are calculated for each measure. The results show that the proposed measures can successfully reduce the negative effects of the regulation but this would entail significant costs. A combination of subsidies towards shippers and ship operators is shown to be effective at reversing potential modal shifts and can be crucial in case of high fuel prices in the near future. The findings of this work can assist operators to develop new strategies and improve the resilience of their network, and regulators designing environmental policies that may have negative implications on certain sectors.
This report presents the results of Activity 3.2-2 of the Scandria®2Act project. It investigates the sensitivity of the Ro-Ro services along the Scandria® corridor to fuel cost fluctuations, anticipates the adverse effects of a possible fuel price hike and discusses potential mitigating measures.
Among the 77 Ro-Ro services that include at least one direct connection between two Baltic ports, the Finland-Germany connections were selected for further examination mainly because this is where the ScanMed and NSB core network corridors meet providing two major alternatives, each of which offer at least two options. In terms of abatement options available to the Ro-Ro operators, the study considers only the switching from Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) to the compliant but more expensive Marine Gas Oil (MGO), which happens to be the only feasible solution in the short-run that does not require a substantial capital investment.
The study deployed two different approaches in meeting its objectives. The first one looked at the problem from the macro-level perspective and the analysis was based on aggregate annual statistics of the ports serving the Finland-Germany connections. A multiple regression model estimated the sensitivity of cargo flows to fuel price fluctuations. Although most of the cargo volumes exhibit a statistically significant sensitivity to fuel price, in all cases this is below 1.0, indicating a rather inelastic
behaviour. The results show that an increase in fuel price penalises the volume of lorries on the longdistance Helsinki-Germany route in favour of the shorter Helsinki-Tallinn and Hanko-Germany options. The trailer (unaccompanied) traffic exhibit a different behaviour that might relate to the pricing policies of the Ro-Ro operators in relation to this market segment.
Aiming at reducing CO2 emissions from shipping at the EU level, a system for monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of CO2 emissions of ships was introduced in 2015 with the so-called ‘MRV Regulation’. Its stated objective was to produce accurate information on the CO2 emissions of large ships using EU ports and to incentivize energy efficiency improvements by making this information publicly available. On 1 July 2019, the European Commission published the relevant data for 10,880 ships that called at EU ports within 2018. This milestone marked the completion of the first annual cycle of the regulation’s implementation, enabling an early assessment of its effectiveness. To investigate the value of the published data, information was collected on all voyages performed within 2018 by a fleet of 1041 dry bulk carriers operated by a leading Danish shipping company. The MRV indicators were then recalculated on a global basis. The results indicate that the geographic coverage restrictions of the MRV Regulation introduce a significant bias, thus prohibiting their intended use. Nevertheless, the MRV Regulation has played a role in prompting the IMO to adopt its Data Collection System that monitors ship carbon emissions albeit on a global basis.