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Marine Policy, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 503-508, 1995
Copyright (~) 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd
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0308-597X(95)00033-X

The environmental
management of shipping
Hance D Smith
Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport, University of Wales College of Cardiff, PO
Box 907, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF1 3YP, UK

The environmental management of shipping requires systematic consideration of the geography

of shipping routes, ship types and cargoes, and environments which can form the basis of a
classificatory approach to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Beyond this, effective
environmental management depends in the first instance upon sound information management
including monitoring of the environment, surveillance of shipping and information technology,
followed by information assessment including, in particular, risk and environmental impact.
The general management dimension includes co-ordination of technical management and
organisational aspects related to shipping. It is suggested that effective environmental manage-
ment of shipping may depend upon a regionalisation of the marine environment for EIA
purposes akin to that found in the Ioadline rules, together with rationalisation of the increasing
number of special areas in existence or proposed for this purpose. EIA will have to become an
integral part of the overall management system in the shipping industry.

Introduction shipping activities, the nature of commodity trades

The environmental management of shipping comes
to the fore when there are serious shipping acci-
dents, especially the recent spectacular tanker
casualties such as the Braer and Exxon Valdez. Yet
without a proper basis of environmental manage-
ment including, in particular, sound E I A , there is
little chance of countering the sensational and often
misleading journalism which inevitably surrounds
such incidents. Furthermore, there are pressing
reasons for adoption of a systematic approach to
environmental management of shipping, including
effective EIA. It is necessary to know what the real
influence of shipping disasters are on the environ-
ment, and to judge as accurately as possible the
policy implications which arise for decision makers
in government and industry, as well as other in-
terests involved.
Also, it is not just the impact of accidents which is
important, serious as that may be, it is also other
environmental implications of routine shipping op-
erations.
The purpose of this paper is accordingly to consid-
er first of all the environmental management of
shipping, paying particular attention to the E I A
dimension, taking due account of the geography of
and their associated cargoes, and approaches to
EIA. This is followed by discussion of information
management including monitoring and surveillance,
databases and their use and management, upon
which the third preoccupation of the paper, informa-
tion assessment, is based. It is in evaluation of
information assessment that the core of E I A lies in
its concern with the physical environment; earth, air,
water, wildlife and human health. Beyond this the
paper moves on to consider the general management
dimension concerned with the co-ordination of tech-
nical management inputs and organisational and
policy implications.
EIA: a classification approach
The term 'environmental management' is not one
generally associated with the shipping industry.
None the less, the reality exists, and arguably has
done so since the early measures for dealing with
pollution from tankers, dating back to the 1920s, and
extending right up to the US Oil Pollution Act of
1990 (OPA90). From an E I A perspective it is neces-
sary to have a clear view of the geography of
shipping routes in relation to the sea allied to a

503
The environmental management o f shipping: H D Smith
ii ii ¸ i i i ¸¸¸¸¸¸ i 57 5 i i i ii i !i i i i i ¸¸ ¸¸¸ i i
D First ord . . . . . Id development centres ~ ~¢" , °~'JL_

~ Major marine development nodes

.:"'':, :~.:::i:!i. ,~
s.,..in.,oo,e, ii>7 ".....
~,~,~ Limits of .... I reefs

i~':~i i M a x i m u m extent of sea ice

" ~ i~ " ~i,
~-~-¢. ~. ,~ ~ /'-. .......

Figure 1. World development regions, shipping routes and the marine environment.

detailed knowledge of the types of cargoes passing degree of risk posed by these environments, the
along these routes. This has to be related not only to geographical categorisation of the loadline rules is a
the spectacular accidents, but also to the routine useful starting point. From an environmental impact
shipping operations and the discharges associated point of view, it is possible to broadly categorise
with them. Further, an extensive literature already environments into polar/sub-polar, temperate and
exists which deals with pollution from ships. It is not tropical/sub-tropical. Aspects of special importance
the purpose of this paper to deal with this literature, include the maximum extent of sea ice and permaf-
but rather to emphasise the overall approaches to rost, and the distribution of coral reefs and man-
E I A which may be adopted to deal effectively and grove coasts.
comprehensively with this aspect in the overall en- Examples of the differing nature of environmental
vironmental management of shipping. impacts in the three major environmental regions
From a global perspective the geography of ship- illustrate fairly well the kinds of problems liable to
ping routes consists of a complex network of trade be encountered in each, especially in the case of
routes centring on the world's principal development major tanker accidents. Thus in the polar/sub-polar
regions (Figure 1). 1 By far the greatest volume of region, the Exxon Valdez incident highlighted the
traffic crosses the North Pacific and North Atlantic severe damage to wildlife and the marine ecosystem
among the principal core regions, and between these inflicted by oil when temperatures are low, even
principal cores and less developed cores which ex- when the weather is fine. Oil is not readily broken
port raw materials to the cores. The main raw down in such environments, which means its toxic
material export is, of course, crude oil. This complex properties may remain active for long periods of
pattern of routes and nodes is superimposed upon a time and greatly damage inherently fragile environ-
wide range of marine and coastal environments. 2 ments. A not dissimilar situation exists in tropical
From an operational point of view, in terms of the environments such as the Straits of Malacca (cf the
case of the Maersk Navigator) where mangrove
coasts and coral reefs constitute equally fragile en-
1H D Smith, 'The development and management of the world vironments, although the pace of regeneration may
ocean', Ocean & Coastal Management, 1994, Vol 24, No 1, pp be quicker, and relatively high temperatures will
3-16. assist in the breakdown of at least the lighter frac-
2See eg J M Walker, 'The weather', in A D Couper (ed.), The
Times Atlas and Encyclopedia of the Sea, Times Books, London, tions of the cargo. By contrast, in temperate regions,
1989, pp 160-161, where the Ioadline regions are related to with great and frequent variability in weather condi-
marine environmental hazards. tions (cf the Braer, Amoco Cadiz and Torrey Ca-

504

nyon incidents), 3 a rapid breakdown and dispersion
of the cargo is liable to occur.
The classification of cargo hazards which E I A
requires is, of course, in the first instance a direct
reflection of the patterns of international trade, with
the degree of risk proportional to traffic density and
hence greatest in the core regions themselves, such
as the southern North Sea, and especially in the
approaches to major ports. The principal hazard
arises f r o m oil as a c a r g o - - b o t h c r u d e and
p r o d u c t s - - a n d from oil as a fuel. However, a very
large range of hazardous cargoes are of course now
concerned, especially the products of the chemical
industry in the widest sense, and it is necessary to
have as comprehensive a classification as possible to
deal with all eventualities. How this may be achieved
is discussed further below.
The E I A approach which is necessary to deal with
this situation includes several aspects. First is the
classification of shipping related to the cargo classi-
fication mentioned above. 4 This should include the
major categories of liquid and dry bulk carriers,
containerships, specialised cargo carriers and pas-
senger ships. Related to this is the classification of
cargoes, including liquid and dry bulk cargoes, other
raw foodstuffs such as fruit, various classes of semi-
manufactured and manufactured goods, and passen-
gers. Already there exist various industry-related
classifications of these which are relevant to this
exercise.
The second element in the E I A approach is to
provide environmental and human health classifica-
tions. The basic elements of a marine environment
classification includes atmosphere, land, coast, sea
and seabed components, taking due account of the
interactions among these; then there are the subsets
of the numerous elements which make these up,
such as mud, silt, sand, shingle, gravel and solid rock
which make up the seabed. Alongside this is the
background classification, including ecosystem com-
ponents, and individual life forms; and human
health components.
The third element of the E I A approach is to
classify the interactions of all the components and
identify the serious conflict areas which produce, for
example, environmental degradation, such as des-
truction of the benthos by aggregate dredging; or
human health problems such as poisoning by shell-
fish. In any particular situation such conflict interac-
tions may range from almost negligible to very
extensive in the case of toxic substances such as
aW Ritchie and M O'Sullivan (eds), The Environmental Impact of
the Wreck of the Braer, The Scottish Office, Edinburgh, 1994;
Hance D Smith, 'The Braer incident: environmental management
experience and issues', in Bob Earll (ed.), Marine Environmental
Management: Review of Events in 1993 and Future Trends,
Kempley, Glos, 1994, pp 35-40.
4See eg J King, 'Modern merchant ships', in A D Couper (ed.), op
cit, Ref 2, pp 138-139, for an outline classification of ship types.
The environmental management o f shipping: H D Smith
crude oil. E I A pinpoints part of a wider system of
interactions and assessment discussed further under
'information assessment', which can result in varia-
tions of the exact definition of what is involved in
EIA. Furthermore, the overall high degree of com-
plexity involved in specifying interactions precisely
puts a premium on information management sys-
tems required to cope with the data involved and
their interpretation.
Information management
The classification system required for E I A depends
u p o n four i n f o r m a t i o n m a n a g e m e n t elements,
namely, environmental monitoring, surveillance of
uses, information technology and the use to which
E I A information is put. Both monitoring and sur-
veillance should cover not only the extreme cases
represented by emergencies, such as oil spills pro-
duced by tanker accidents, but also routine opera-
tions which in the case of oil in port areas, for
example, is normally much more significant than
large-scale spills.
Monitoring programmes should ideally have a
long-term component 5 which will provide baseline
information which can then be used for a variety of
purposes, including E I A and environmental audit-
ing. Accidents apart, such arrangements are not
likely to be made specifically for shipping except in
the vicinity of large ports handling dangerous car-
goes, such as crude and refined oils. One of the few
examples of a monitoring system being established
in conjunction with the building of the port itself is
the case of Sullom Voe, where the system has been
in existence for some two decades. 6 Normally, such
as system requires development for existing ports. A
wide review of pollution hazards and management in
ports was organised as part of the 800th anniversary
celebrations of the port of Hamburg in 1989. An
important point to note is that port environmental
monitoring systems should not be seen in isolation
from other monitoring and science programmes
being carried on in port waters adjacent to ports and
along major shipping routes, both over the continen-
tal shelf and the deep ocean.
Surveillance in shipping management focuses
around three major areas of study. The first might
be termed open sea surveillance which has always
been military-oriented. Since the advent of satellite
surveillance it has become possible to supplement
surveillance on shelf seas with complete coverage of
5SVEAG, Oil Terminal at Sullom Voe: Environmental Impact
Assessment, Thuleprint, Shetland, 1976; L V Kingham, 'The
response to industry: the Shetland Oil Terminal Environmental
Advisory Group', in William J Cairns (ed.), North Sea Oil and the
Environment: Developing Oil and Gas Resources, Environmental
Impacts and Responses, Elsevier Applied Science, London and
New York, 1992, pp 333-353.
6SVEAG, op cit, Ref 5.
505
The environmental management o f shipping: H D Smith
the world ocean, and use this for dealing with
emergencies. The second element is inshore surveill-
ance, based on coastguard services. This has both
emergency provision, such as the U K Marine Pollu-
tion Control Unit (MPCU), 7 and routine operations
which may involve an element of control, such as the
U K Channel Navigation Information Service. s The
third part of the system is port-based in the form of
the Port Control System (PCS) necessary for effi-
cient port operations. From an environmental point
of view, the weak link in the system is the inshore
surveillance, on shelf seas, which is lacking both in
terms of its coverage in high risk areas and in its
efficacy to the extent that any decisions on ship
control based on it are enforceable. A recent exam-
ple has been the call for permanent radar surveill-
ance in the waters around Shetland. 9
The outcome of these monitoring and surveillance
activities is in the first instance large quantities of
data. Much surveillance activity is short term and the
data are not retained. However, data on ships,
cargoes and environmental monitoring are generally
long-term. In order to use data effectively both for
routine regulation and emergency response, the
primary requirement is for some kind of networked
database management system to link the diverse
data sets, as required. Thus, for example, specific oil
spill data can be linked into oil industry, shipping
and environmental data sets as required in emergen-
cy situations such as the Braer incident.
The use of the information thereby gained can
then be systematically considered for E I A purposes.
A first concern is to make accessible systematic
standard information on ships, cargoes and environ-
mental variables held by public and private organisa-
tions, including pollution response units and labor-
atories. This arguably involves setting up a readily
accessible network for use in the first instance by
those involved in contingency planning and dealing
with emergencies; and then by organisations con-
cerned with longer-term amelioration of effects. A
second purpose is then to use information for mod-
elling exercises. At present these are mainly con-
cerned with models dealing with the spread of
pollution from oil spills. However, there is no reason
why more sophisticated overall management simula-
tion modelling approaches might not also be de-
veloped. A third purpose is the use of the informa-
tion directly in management decision making. A first
step in this is the preparation of, for example, oil
spill response plans. In order to effectively use
information for these various purposes, however, it
7j Bywater, 'Government response to marine pollution from
ships', Marine Policy, Vol 19, No 6, 1995, pp 487-496.
SR K N Emden, 'The Channel Navigation Information Service',
Journaloflnst. Navigation, Vol 36, No 2, 1983, pp 195-210.
9George Sutherland, 'Management and control of shipping
around Shetland', Marine Policy, Vol 17, No 5, 1993, pp 371-
379.
506
is necessary to conduct a detailed information assess-
ment process. Before considering this in more detail,
it is worth noting that the Braer case provides a good
example of the use of information in the manner
described above, ranging from commissioning of
specific field surveys to modelling. 1o
Information assessment
The nub of the E I A process is of course the informa-
tion assessment stage itself. The term 'environmen-
tal impact assessment' is widely used, and its precise
meaning and scope varies a good deal. It is thus
necessary first of all to realise that it is part of a
wider field of information assessment which contains
several interlinked elements which have tended to
grow semi-independently of one another, and for
which there remains something of a challenge to link
them effectively, both in practical management con-
texts and in terms of academic theory. By far the
oldest is risk assessment, including risk to the en-
vironment, property and human life, which is as old
as the marine insurance industry itself. A second
may broadly be termed economic assessment, which
is similarly old, at least in part, and contains a range
of techniques ranging from conventional land and
property valuation to cost-benefit analysis and con-
tingent valuation approaches. A third, which eman-
ates from an American background, is technology
assessment, which is a very important aspect linking
engineering design to environmental variables.
Finally comes E I A and social impact assessment.
These are to a substantial extent also American
creations, dating from the 1970s, and in a marine
context commonly associated with the advent of the
offshore oil industry in the North Sea.
Within this wide field EIA is best strictly defined
as relating to the physical environment, including
wildlife and marine ecosystems and human health.
The marine physical environment can in turn be
classified as noted above into atmosphere, sea sur-
face, coast, water column, seabed and sub-seabed
components, with numerous sub-categories in each.
Ecosystems can be classified in terms of structure
and geographical scale, ranging from large marine
ecosystems (LMEs)I l at one end to particular small-
scale benthic communities at the other. Within
these, particular life forms are at a premium from a
human point of view, including marine mammals,
commercial fish stocks and certain seaweeds. Finally
are the human health hazards, ranging from general
pollution of the physical environment to poisonous
marine life forms. Again, the investigations into the
l°Hance Smith (ed.), 'Managing the marine environment: Shet-
land and the sea', Marine Policy, Vol 17, No 5, 1993, pp 332-485.
~Lewis M Alexander, 'Large Marine Ecosystems: a new focus for
marine resources management', Marine Policy, Vol 17, No 3,
1993, pp 186-198.

Braer case provide an excellent illustration of E I A in
practice. 12
Clearly the complexity of the full range of en-
vironmental impacts is specifically related both to
the wide range of sea uses and even wider range of
environmental variables as defined above, and is
enormous. None the less, an initial descriptive classi-
fication of interactions is necessary, which will also
attempt to assess degrees of especially negative
interactions b e t w e e n the e n v i r o n m e n t and its
numerous uses. However, such a classification is of
limited use unless some kind of overall calibration
and application of standards is attempted, a task
which has not really been undertaken yet in the
present context.
In general, E I A has not yet really been used much
in the context of the port and shipping industries. In
the case of ports, environmental auditing and en-
vironmental management generally is beginning to
gain ground. 13 In shipping the principal interest
naturally attaches to accidents. A substantial prop-
ortion of routine discharges and associated pollution
is in any case occurring within port limits or im-
mediately adjacent to port waters. We are, however,
fortunate in possessing full-scale EIAs for major
accidents, such as the Exxon Valdez and especially
the Braer, together with a set of recently published
papers on the latter incident. 14 The report on the
Braer in particular is a model of the systematic and
rigorous approach which is required, and illustrates
well the costs involved in conducting such a study
and the widespread environmental ramifications of
the accident itself. The sheer complexity of impacts
involved in turn raises some general management
issues which we now address.
General management considerations
The first of these relates to the co-ordination of the
technical management aspects. This includes the
information management dimensions of environ-
mental monitoring, use surveillance, database man-
agement and uses. Also included are the specific
E I A processes related to the physical and biological
environments and human health. Perhaps most im-
portant, however, are the relationships of EIA to
the other types of information assessment noted
above. In the case of risk assessment, for example, it
may become increasingly possible as EIA improves
to quantify levels of risk in relation to more closely
specified environmental impacts. It may only be a
short step from doing this to providing more precise
measurement of economic impacts in a similar vein.
Although much practical experience remains to be
laW Ritchie, M O'Sullivan (eds), op cit, Ref 3.
13A O Couper, 'Environmental port management', Maritime Pofi-
cy& Management, Vol 19, No 2, 1992, pp 165-170.
~4Hance Smith, op cit, Ref 10.
The environmental management o f shipping: H D Smith
gained, it is foreseeable that it will become possible
to include more quantitative E I A calculations in, for
example, the settlement of insurance claims, and
assessment of prevention and clean-up costs. A
f u r t h e r step to imagine is then m o r e precise
measurement of the implications for, say, ship de-
sign, or social impact considerations.
Beyond the co-ordination of technical manage-
ment functions lies the management of the organisa-
tions concerned with these and the ways in which
these interests relate to one another. Here it would
seem we have reached something of a turning point
in the evolution of arrangements which have been
evolving since at least the 1970s. Major considera-
tions include, for example, the coming into force of
the Law of the Sea Convention, the CLC Conven-
tion, OPA90, the updating of regional environmen-
tal protection conventions and related management
measures, notably in the North East Atlantic, and
the effort being put into the U N E P Regional Seas
Programme. Overall these developments amount to
the gradual emergence of a more elaborate manage-
ment regime.
General management is also concerned with ques-
tions of both strategic management of the over-
all E I A system which might apply in the case of
shipping and policy considerations. In the con-
text of E I A two particular issues come to mind,
which relate respectively to the management of
ships and navigation on the one hand, and man-
agement of the marine environment per se on the
other.
From the shipping and navigation point of view,
the application of E I A would be more systematic if
it could be based on the geographical principles
inherent in the loadline rules. These rules, in effect,
set conditions on ship design and operation which
are related to degrees of risk posed by certain
sets of environmental conditions which are geo-
graphically defined. For E I A it is necessary to
add more environmental criteria, which would at
least include the summer and winter limits of sea
ice cover, the identification of ecologically signifi-
cant sub-polar and temperate waters to include the
Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, Alaskan coastal margin
waters, parts of the North Atlantic and the Southern
Ocean south of the Antarctic Convergence; and
similarly ecologically significant areas defined by the
northern and southern limits of coral reefs and man-
grove coasts. The definition of large marine eco-
systems in temperate waters perhaps would not be
possible, except to distinguish between the shelf sea
systems on the one hand and deep ocean systems on
the other.
The second major strategic management and poli-
cy consideration is the identification and perhaps
recognition of the various kinds of special areas
which have been put forward or applied for the
environmental management of shipping, including
507
The environmental management o f shipping: H D Smith
Donaldson's M E H R A ' s . 15 Already these form part
of a much larger proliferation of designations applic-
able to practically the whole range of maritime
activities ranging from fisheries at one extreme to
naval exercises at the other. While this is also right
and necessary from the perspective of the individual
uses concerned, taken together these may and some-
times do constitute an unco-ordinated mishmash of
measures from an environmental management point
of view.
In effect there are arguably three levels of con-
servation activity which can be consistently applied
to specific geographical areas. These are, respective-
ly, those areas where conservation is ranked as a top
priority above all oth.er use categories; intermediate
areas where conservation is secondary and of
varying degrees of importance relative to other uses;
and areas where conservation is either a low priority
or not important at all. The best current example of
this is the planning system operated by the Great
Barrier R e e f Marine Park Authority, with its Special
Protection Area categories and General Use Zones
A and B. 16 In such a region it becomes possible to be
systematic about the application of E I A criteria of
the kind discussed in this paper and similarly to
systematically link these to the above-mentioned
zones defined for shipping and navigation manage-
ment purposes.
15Safer Ships, Cleaner Seas, Report of Lord Donaldson's Inquiry
into the Prevention of Pollution from Merchant Shipping,
Cm2560, HMSO, London, 1994.
16Richard A Kenchington, Managing Marine Environments,
Taylor & Francis, London and New York, 1990, pp 147-172.
508
Conclusions
The environmental management of shipping has
gradually been growing under other terminologies,
but the key area of E I A with regard to both shipping
and ports is a relatively new activity where arguably
most of the developments lie in the future rather
than the past. It is desirable that an overall approach
is d e v e l o p e d which is c o n s i s t e n t with o t h e r
approaches being developed in other main sectors
such as the offshore oil industry.
The first step in such an approach is to develop an
appropriate classification system which relates to the
geography of shipping routes, shipping and cargo
hazards, the marine and coastal environment itself,
and the interactions of uses and environment. This
can provide the basis for suitable information man-
agement systems and facilitate establishment of
priorities in environmental monitoring, use surveill-
ance, database management systems and their ap-
plication in fields such as simulation modelling.
Meanwhile, at the heart of EIA is the need for
precise practical definition of its scope in relation to
other fields of information assessment, coupled with
application of a systematic listing of concerns rang-
ing from the physical environment through the
biological environment to human health. Related to
this is the co-ordination of technical management
functions, the development of a relatively new net-
work of mainly existing organisations to manage
E I A in the shipping field; and the need for long-term
strategic management and policy development. In
the latter case there is considerable value in identify-
ing major ecological regions in ship and navigation
management perhaps integrated with the loadline
approach; and to integrate navigational special areas
within a holistic approach to marine conservation
designations.