The European Green Deal (EGD) adopted in December 2019 seeks to facilitate the transition of the EU towards a climate-neutral continent and a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy by 2050. In addition to a set of objectives, it is also a policy program that will affect the policy landscape, by driving the development of new directives and regulation, and the amendment of existing ones. In order to facilitate a transition of EU society to better protect the marine environment, decision making and implementation processes within marine governance will need to be improved to develop and implement measures through which EGD marine protection objectives will be achieved.
The Horizon Europe PERMAGOV project aims to improve the implementation and performance of EU marine policies to reach the goals set in the EGD. The PERMAGOV project focuses on four issue areas, so-called regime complexes: Maritime Transport, Marine Energy, Marine Life and Marine Plastics. Within each regime complex, 2 to 3 case studies are used to explore and analyse how governance arrangements are emerging and changing and improving their performance through the EGD. These case studies span three European Seas, the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the North East Atlantic.
Most regulatory tools for low-carbon transition are jurisdiction-specific, respecting the principle of national sovereignty. Although possibly locally successful, they typically capture only scope 1 and scope 2 emissions. Value chains-related (scope 3) emissions remain largely unregulated. This is problematic, as global value chains are commonly organized across multiple jurisdictions with different climate policy ambitions. Products are often produced at different location than where they are consumed, and production-related emissions are transferred with the products. These emissions embedded in imported products amount to large volumes (e.g. in the EU estimated to about 30% of member state’s national emissions). This chapter gathers the scientific evidence on upstream scope 3 emissions and discusses the available regulatory toolbox for reducing those. Both private and public regulatory tools are represented as well as soft and hard regulatory tools, and modifications between those categories. The interactions between the various types of regulation are discussed with the aim to identify possible synergies and conflicts. The chapter takes the EU as its starting point and draws in examples from other jurisdictions where relevant.
The Gulf of Guinea (GoG) region is a vast maritime area off West and Central Africa, and an area of interest to numerous external actors for a range of different reasons including historical relations, trade, oil and fishery. This maritime space is characterised not only by legitimate actors’ presence at sea but also by various types of maritime criminality, with piracy currently being high on the agenda of external actors. Indeed, in 2020, 95% of all maritime kidnappings globally happened in the GoG. Through the application of a specific theoretical lens, namely the politics of piracy numbers, this chapter offers a regional case study of piracy in the GoG. Through this lens, the chapter for example explores how, though being the most counted type of maritime insecurity, piracy is only one aspect of a much broader complex of maritime insecurities. Attending also to the politics of missing numbers, the chapter also explores how far less attention is devoted to counting various onshore dimension of GoG-piracy.
This report provides public recommendations for waterborne transport to West Coast of Norway, with the focus on the specified transport system in use case A in the AEGIS project. The complete background for this report is only achieved by reading all the other deliverables related to the use case, however these are confidential. Therefore, it is recommended to read the ICMASS 2022 paper "Development of an advanced, efficient and green intermodal system with autonomous inland and short sea shipping – AEGIS"1 to get a better overview of the project and specifically use case A. The transport system of use case A consists of mother vessel(s) together with one or more daughter vessels, connected by several ports. The mother vessel transports containers from Rotterdam via Hitra Kysthavn and into ports in the Trondheimsfjorden. The rationale for this use case is to enable a more flexible and cost-efficient waterborne transport solution for fjords and smaller ports.
Green House Gas (GHG) emissions are not the only emissions of concern to the international transport community. SOx emissions are non-GHG emissions that are caused by the presence of sulphur in the fuel. As the maximum percentage of sulphur in automotive and aviation fuels is strictly regulated in most countries around the world, much of the attention in recent years has focused on maritime transport. The attention mainly stems from the fact that in marine fuels the percentage of sulphur can be very high: it can be as high as 4.5 % in Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), which is the fuel typically used in all deep-sea trades. Even though the amounts of SOx produced by ships are substantially lower than CO2, SOx emissions are highly undesirable as they cause acid rain and undesirable health effects in humans and animals. To mitigate these adverse environmental effects, the international shipping community has taken substantial policy measures. With the introduction of new limits for the content of sulphur in marine fuels in Northern European and North American sea areas, short-sea companies operating in these areas will face substantial additional cost. As of 1/1/2015, international regulations stipulate, among other things, a 0.1%limit in the sulphur content of marine fuels, or equivalent measures limiting the percent of SOx emissions to the same amount. As low-sulphur fuel is substantially more expensive than HFO, there is little or no room within these companies current margins to absorb such additional cost, and thus significant price increases must be expected. Unlike its deep-sea counterpart, in short-sea shipping such a freight rate increase may induce shippers to use landbased alternatives (mainly road). A reverse shift of cargo would go against the EU policy to shift traffic from land to sea to reduce congestion, and might ultimately (under certain circumstances) increase the overall level of CO2 emissions along the entire supply chain. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the potential effect of sulphur regulations on the share of cargo transported by the waterborne mode vis-à-vis land-based alternatives.
Coastal communities have ideas and plans on how to redirect the blue economy to
support thriving societies, but how can EU Member States better support bottom-up
transitions?
This is a policy brief included in D5.3 of EmpowerUs.
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has for four decades been considered by many to be one of the most important legislative achievements of international law. It is revered as a “constitution of the oceans”, providing the legal framework for the governance of the oceans. This volume explores how the UNCLOS is functioning in various complex settings, how it adapts to new, emerging developments, as well as how it interacts with other regulations, both within the law of the sea regime and outside. Engaging in themes such as law and order at sea, UNCLOS' interaction with human rights and the role of private actors, the book raises complex questions in the application, understanding, and enforcement of the convention and how it can be envisaged, interpreted, and used in a dynamic world. The volume also raises methodological questions, the answers to which may enhance the predictability and coherence of the law under UNCLOS and thus secure its role as the predominant and relevant system for legal governance at sea for many decades to come. As a contribution to ensuring the future relevance of UNCLOS, the book will be a valuable resource for scholars, diplomats, judges and other practitioners who are working with and interpreting the law of the sea and related issues of maritime law, migration law, human rights law and humanitarian law.
The concept of 'seal-fishery conflict' is used when referring to the complex contradictions stemming from seals' impacts on fishing livelihoods, a pertinent social struggle between stakeholder groups of the Baltic Sea. Tensions are most remarkable between coastal fisheries and seal conservationists. As existing knowledge has been scattered and the conflict has become increasingly problematic, the RESOCO project compiled Nordic knowledge and best practices and built an interdisciplinary synthesis to set the stage for alternative solutions on how to effectively reconcile the seal-fishery conflict in the Baltic Sea. The report takes a pragmatic stand by turning the attention to approaches and instruments that have been suggested to be helpful or that have the potential to help mitigate the conflict. The report synthesizes knowledge and presents existing gaps and needs of further research.
The year 2020 was largely defined by the unprecedented disruption caused by Covid-19 pandemic, which could have lasting adverse effects on every corners of human life. In the meanwhile, the pandemic has fundamentally changed the way of how industrial enterprises operate, empowering businesses to accelerate their digital transformation and reshaping their business models. Throughout the pandemic, shipping has been essential in terms of guaranteeing the global supply chain linkage and economic interdependency. As the world moves toward recovery, the maritime industry is also stepping up to the challenge and responds to these extraordinary disruptions. Against this background, a thorough, broader, and new review of maritime businesses will be particularly important.