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.
Enhancing environmental sustainability in maritime shipping has emerged as an important topic for both firms in shipping-related industries and policy makers. Speed optimization has been proven to be one of the most effective operational measures to achieve this goal, as fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a ship are very sensitive to its sailing speed. Existing research on ship speed optimization does not differentiate speed through water (STW) from speed over ground (SOG) when formulating the fuel consumption function and the sailing time function. Aiming to fill this research gap, we propose a speed optimization model for a fixed ship route to minimize the total fuel consumption over the whole voyage, in which the influence of ocean currents is taken into account. As the difference between STW and SOG is mainly due to ocean currents, the proposed model is capable of distinguishing STW from SOG. Thus, in the proposed model, the ship’s fuel consumption and sailing time can be determined with the correct speed. A case study on a real voyage for an oil products tanker shows that: (a) the average relative error between the estimated SOG and the measured SOG can be reduced from 4.75% to 1.36% across sailing segments, if the influence of ocean currents is taken into account, and (b) the proposed model can enable the selected oil products tanker to save 2.20% of bunker fuel and reduce 26.12 MT of CO2 emissions for a 280-h voyage. The proposed model can be used as a practical and robust decision support tool for voyage planners/managers to reduce the fuel consumption and GHG emissions of a ship
Although the concept of ecosystem services has been in use for many decades, its application for policy support is limited, particularly with respect to marine ecosystems. Gaps in the assessments of ecosystem services supply prevent its empirical application. We advance these assessments by providing an assessment tool, which links marine ecosystem components, functions and services, and graphically represents the assessment process and its results. The tool consists of two parts: (i) a matrix following the ecosystem services cascade structure for quantifying the contribution of ecosystem components in the provision of ecosystem services; (ii) and a linkage diagram for visualizing the interactions between the elements. With the aid of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), the tool was used to assess the relative contribution of a wide range of marine ecosystem components in the supply of ecosystem services in the Latvian marine waters. Results indicate that the tool can be used to assess the impacts of environmental degradation in terms of ecosystem service supply. These impacts could further be valued in socioeconomic terms, as changes in the socioeconomic values derived from the use of ecosystem services. The tool provides an opportunity for conducting a holistic assessment of the ecosystem service supply and communicating the results to marine spatial planning practitioners, and increasing their understanding and use of the ecosystem service concept.
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.
Ocean monitoring will improve outcomes if ways of knowing and priorities from a range of interest groups are successfully integrated. Coastal Indigenous communities hold unique knowledge of the ocean gathered through many generations of inter-dependent living with marine ecosystems. Experiences and observations from living within that system have generated ongoing local and traditional ecological knowledge (LEK and TEK) and Indigenous knowledge (IK) upon which localized sustainable management strategies have been based. Consequently, a comprehensive approach to ocean monitoring should connect academic practices (“science”) and local community and Indigenous practices, encompassing “TEK, LEK, and IK.” This paper recommends research approaches and methods for connecting scientists, local communities, and IK holders and their respective knowledge systems, and priorities, to help improve marine ecosystem management. Case studies from Canada and New Zealand (NZ) highlight the emerging recognition of IK systems in natural resource management, policy and economic development. The in-depth case studies from Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) and the new Moana Project, NZ highlight real-world experiences connecting IK with scientific monitoring programs. Trial-tested recommendations for successful collaboration include practices for two-way knowledge sharing between scientists and communities, co-development of funding proposals, project plans and educational resources, mutually agreed installation of monitoring equipment, and ongoing sharing of data and research results. We recommend that future ocean monitoring research be conducted using cross-cultural and/or transdisciplinary approaches. Vast oceans and relatively limited monitoring data coupled with the urgency of a changing climate emphasize the need for all eyes possible providing new data and insights. Community members and ocean monitoring scientists in joint research teams are essential for increasing ocean information using diverse methods compared with previous scientific research. Research partnerships can also ensure impactful outcomes through improved understanding of community needs and priorities.
Marine space is overall under increasing pressure from human activities and in the way harming the marine ecosystems. Maritime spatial planning is one of the governance elements in the EU Integrated Maritime Policy (2007) that aims to maximize the sustainable use of the seas and oceans. Maritime spatial planning aims to ensure that the increased use of the marine space takes place in a way that is consistent with the sustainable development in the seas and oceans. According to the MSP Directive it is required to follow an ecosystem-based and thus holistic approach. For this to happen, tools are needed, and some tools are available but with various advantages and disadvantages. The aim of the current research has been to develop a comprehensive package of tools to assess the environmental impacts of societal activities under different maritime spatial planning proposals.
Sustainable shipping involves not only ships but ports as their extension. This chapter examines the issues associated with a green port operation. These include technologies such as cold ironing; market-based practices such as differentiated fairway dues, speed reduction, and noise and dust abatement; and others. The legislative framework in various countries is explained, and various environmental scorecards are discussed. This chapter starts with a brief review on recent academic research in the field of environmental management of ports and presents the status quo in leading ports around the world. The chapter emphasizes on the implementation of speed reduction programmes near the port, the use of cold ironing at berth, and the effects of fuel quality regulation, considering the perspectives of the port authority and the ship operator. The emerging environmental and economic trade-offs are discussed. The aim of this chapter is to be a starting point for researchers seeking to work on green ports. Insights of this chapter may also be useful for stakeholders seeking to select the best emissions reduction option depending on their unique characteristics.
Small-scale fishing communities along Cambodia's coast have relied on marine resources as a mainstay of their livelihood for many decades. However, in the past 10 to 15 years, environmental change, increased fishing pressure, illegal, underreported, and unregulated fishing, and sand mining have contributed to a progressive decline in their catch. At the same time, economic opportunities outside the coastal village have acted as a draw and catalyzed migration to secondary cities and to the capital. This study examines out-migration of people from coastal communities to the city of Koh Kong. Using qualitative data collected from three fishing villages, I explore why people leave and why others stay in the village. In the context of city provisioning systems, the study also reveals a shift in climate-related vulnerability for coastal village migrants when they become urban residents. The study highlights the importance of looking not only at city planning, infrastructure challenges, and climate risks but also at the attendant social effects that phenomena such as migration have on people who are increasingly on the move. Such a perspective offers a more people-centred understanding of urban climate resilience in Cambodia, and potentially for other countries across Southeast Asia.
Any ecosystem based fisheries management system is necessarily faced with the problem of multiple objectives that trade-off against one another. Typically, objectives such as the maximization of yield, employment or profit or minimizing environmental impacts will be optimized in different parts of the decision space, which is formed of the fishing mortality rates that can be applied to the various species, given the constraints imposed by the mixed species nature of many fishing fleets. Since objectives cannot be simultaneously achieved, managers need to consider how such objectives trade-off against one another in order to choose a balanced strategy. Normally, they also have to consider the views of different groupings of stakeholders, who often favour widely different and conflicting objectives. This is particularly difficult if stakeholders are reluctant to expose their negotiating positions. This article explores two possible approaches to developing a Decision Support Framework for the North Sea. The first is a classic Multi- Criteria Analysis (MCA) approach that was developed in cooperation with North Sea stakeholders. The implementation went smoothly for the definition of suitable scenarios, decision trees and criteria, but failed in facilitating consensus on how to set priorities at the stakeholder level. However, it remains a possible approach for higher level management to adopt. Consequently, to aid effective decision-making a simpler approach was designed to visualise stakeholders concerns both to themselves and to the managers in charge of actual decision-making. Rather than trying to achieve some joint optima of the objectives that stakeholders wish to achieve this approach seeks to avoid the solutions various stakeholder groups resent the most. This ‘N dimensional potato approach’ proposed here treats the decision space as analogous to a partially rotten potato that has to be prepared for the table: each group of stakeholders cut away those parts of the decision space that they consider unacceptable. Ideally, this would leave a decision space where somewhat acceptable compromise solutions exist. But, if no decision space is left after all have made their cuts, this approach will still inform managers about the consequences of different solutions in terms of which group will be disappointed and by how much. Making this approach operational requires both uncovering various stakeholders’ views of the unacceptable areas, and also displaying these areas in a convenient fashion together with areas of stakeholder consent. The article describes the steps taken to address these two tasks by the North Sea case study of the MareFrame research project.
A 3D fully nonlinear potential flow (FNPF) model based on an Eulerian formulation is presented. The model is discretized using high-order prismatic – possibly curvi-linear – elements using a spectral element method (SEM) that has support for adaptive unstructured meshes. The paper presents details of the FNPF-SEM development and the model is illustrated to exhibit exponential convergence. The model is then applied to the case of focused waves impacting on a surface-piecing fixed FPSO-like structure. Good agreement was found between numerical and experimental wave elevations and pressures.