Lawrence Hildebrand

The International Maritime Organization and Oil Pollution in the Mediterranean Sea

Maritime transportation has diametric personalities. The advancement in global maritime transportation of oil products has resulted in commercial advantages. This advancement has simultaneously led to environmental disadvantages, sporadically leaving the marine environment in a detrimental position. “Commercial advantages” and “environmental disadvantages” are apparently two central issues that emanate from maritime transportation. Although the disadvantages cannot concretely outweigh the advantages, the “pollution” aspect has coastal states, environmentalists, marine biologists, and international organizations worrying whether economic gain is worth destroying the pristine environment. However, some environmentalists are optimistic and state that the marine environment has a form of resistance-capacity and time may heal the human-initiated damage leading to the point where nature will reinstate itself to its original status. However, what has changed today is that with the advancement in global maritime transportation, the impacts on the marine environment are no longer small, localized, and reversible. Incidents both accidental and operational in nature have raised serious environmental concerns. The Mediterranean Sea is no exception to this concern.

Oil Spill Intervention in the Mediterranean Sea

It is axiomatic that maritime transportation is essential for international trade. As the global economy and commerce continue to grow, significant pressure falls on maritime transportation. The types of goods conveyed by maritime transportation are innumerable. Oil is one of the transported commodities that rank high among import–export items. Without oil, the world’s energy supply is predicted to slowly run dry and in that instance, the ever-expanding global economy might lose its raison d’etre. Marked by its versatile utility, oil supply has been in high demand in the international market for a considerable period of time. Occasionally, oil transportation via tankers does not always go as expected. Even though accidental discharges from incidents such as the Torrey Canyon, Amoco Cadiz, and the Exxon Valdez are considered to be less when compared to other types of vessel-source pollution, those incidents have nevertheless, demonstrated the need for a comprehensive national contingency plan to combat the deleterious effects of oil pollution at sea. Hence, they have been the reason behind the outcry of affected coastal communities and increased public attention to the threat of oil spills.

Marine Environmental Governance in the East Asian Seas Region

Marine environmental governance (MEG)—incompletely defined, variably understood, evolving in its theory, and growing in practice at international to local scales—is emerging as an increasingly accepted approach to managing complex, inter-connected and co-dependent marine ecosystems and societies around the world. Consensus is emerging around the practice’s core elements, guided by an evolving body of scholarship and informed by practical experience. This knowledge is providing invaluable insights on how to effectively implement, strengthen, and ultimately sustain this dynamic process that is being employed in diverse geopolitical, cultural, socioeconomic, and ecological settings and under both statutory authorities and voluntary enabling mechanisms. In the East Asian Seas region, the focus of this Special Issue, we explore insightful case studies of marine environmental governance arrangements that reflect this diversity of scale and approach. Articles for this Special Issue of Coastal Management have been selected to add to and enrich the discussion on and understanding of what we mean by MEG, both in theory and in practice. It does so by drawing on experience and lessons learned from the East Asian Seas Region (see Figure 1), a vast marine region of over 7 million km2, encompassing six of the world’s large marine ecosystems (LME), bordered by 15 countries, and home to over 2 billion people. It also does so in the forward-looking context of the “Rio+20” era and what the United Nations Secretary-General is calling the post-2015 development framework. But before we can discuss and better understand what marine environmental governance means, some discussion on definitions is in order; this issue is far from settled. The central concept of governance, or the more popular term “good governance,” has its origins in the field of political science, and is being promoted as a means of achieving the goal of sustainable utilization of natural renewable resources (Chakalall, Mahon, and McConney 1998; Sissenwine and Mace 2003). Given that no internationally agreed definition of what precisely constitutes “good governance” exists, and that the context-specific nature of such a definition makes finding a definitive formulation somewhat complicated, the most

Navigating the Future: Towards Sustainable Arctic Marine Operations and Shipping in a Changing Arctic

This volume is focused on a broad set of challenges and issues related to sustainable marine operations and shipping in a future Arctic, a region experiencing extraordinary change and increasingly intense attention. The numerous chapters in this volume highlight the key current and future issues in the Arctic, with a sharp focus on what remains to be done and how we must proceed.

Introduction to the New Maritime Arctic

Fundamental changes continue to reshape the maritime Arctic. Globalization (the linkage of Arctic natural resources to global markets), profound climate change, regional and global geopolitics, and challenges to the Arctic’s indigenous people are all drivers of a new era at the top of the world. The Arctic Council’s Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment released in 2009 continues to be a key, policy framework of the Arctic states for protection of Arctic people and the marine environment. An International Maritime Organization (IMO) Polar Code ushered in on 1 January 2017 a new era of governance for commercial ships and passenger vessels sailing in polar waters. Current Arctic marine commercial traffic is dominated by destinational voyages related to natural resource development, particularly along Russia’s Northern Sea Route. New Arctic marine operations and shipping are emerging, but significant challenges remain including: effective implementation and enforcement of the IMO Polar Code; a huge gap in Arctic marine infrastructure (hydrography and charting, communications, emergency response capacity, and more); enhancing the monitoring and surveillance of Arctic waters; the challenge of developing a set of marine protected areas and additional Polar Code measures for the circumpolar region; and, the need for large public and private investments, as well as potential public-private partnerships in the Arctic. Cooperation among the Arctic states, the non-Arctic shipping states, and the global maritime enterprise will be critical to effective protection of Arctic people and the marine environment, and developing sustainable strategies for the region.

Limitations of the Swedish network coordination of oil spill preparedness

The management of extreme crisis situations in Sweden has shown delays in decisive actions at higher levels during emergencies, such as oil spills. This has been blamed on unclear responsibilities that undermine the decision-making process. Confusing, conflicting, or delayed orders impede response effectiveness. This article uses network analysis and survey responses to examine the Swedish oil spill crisis management network and show the Swedish Coast Guard, Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and Oil Spill Advisory Service as central organizations. However, the roles of these organizations need to be clarified and communicated better to other organizations. In order to improve coordination of Swedish oil spill preparedness, it is suggested to formalize and strengthen the roles of these central organizations. Weak connections between municipalities in different counties were also observed. This weakness could be overcome by more frequent exercises across counties to improve familiarity.

Ocean Governance and Sustainability

This chapter situates the maritime and shipping sector within the dynamic and integrated physical-social-ecological ocean system and the broad and evolving framework of ocean governance, management, and sustainability. While shipping operations occupy a prominent and historic role in the maritime world, ships no longer rule the waves alone. The ocean and coastal margins of the world are indeed vast and extensive, but they are increasingly crowded, competitive, and conflicted. And now we are expanding and intensifying traditional ocean industries and adding new exploitive activities to the mix, all in the pursuit of a “blue economy,” whether reasonable or not, sustainable or otherwise. Our uses and abuses of the ocean to date have seriously compromised the very foundations of the ocean and coastal system and led to growing marine environmental degradation and the consequent costs of an underperforming ocean economy, loss of essential ecosystem goods and services (which largely sustain the former), increased use conflicts, and challenging legal questions.

Limitations of the Swedish coordination capacity for large oil spills

The inadequacy of the Swedish national emergency management system has been highlighted during several large-scale national emergencies, including forest fires (Vastmanland 2014) and storms (Gudrun...

COMPARING SWEDISH OIL SPILL PREPAREDNESS TO REGIONAL COUNTRIES USING THE RETOS™ EVALUATION TOOL

ABSTRACT 2017-253 Few standardised frameworks are designed to assess the full range of oil spill preparedness activities, from plan development, implementation, equipment, training, exercises, and response sustainability. This paper analyses the international practice of oil spill preparedness measures and compares them to Swedish practice. Friedman’s test and Dunn’s post-test have been used to compare the RETOS™ evaluation scores of Finland, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark, and Norway to Sweden. The United States is examined as an external reference. The RETOS™ programme is an Excel tool developed for the International Oil Spill Conference 2008. It is a guide for industry and governments to assess their level of oil spill response, planning, and preparedness management in relation to established criteria, and is intended for international best management practices. Swedish oil spill preparedness is shown to be comparable to the Baltic Sea regional practice. The Swedish RETOS™ evaluati...