The development of a transdisciplinary policy framework for shipping companies to mitigate underwater noise pollution from commercial vessels

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112687Get rights and content

Highlights

  • To mitigate UWN from ships, the single-dimensional thinking should be replaced with the transdisciplinary one.

  • Any proposed framework to reduce UWN could be in alignment with IMO’s GHG strategy.

  • Goalbased measures should be considered to mitigate UWN from ships.

Abstract

One of the newly emerging environmental issues is underwater noise pollution. It has both negative environmental and socio-economic impacts and threatens sustainable shipping. While other types of shipping pollutants have been regulated and societal awareness has been raised, due to the intangible characteristics of underwater noise pollution, there is neither societal awareness nor an international legally binding instrument to mitigate underwater noise pollution. This paper aims to raise awareness of ship owners regarding UWN pollution by introducing the sources of UWN pollution, as well as proposing a transdisciplinary policy for shipping companies to mitigate UWN pollution from their ships. The proposed policy is aligned with IMO's initial GHG strategy, especially the Energy Efficiency Design Index, Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index, and Enhanced Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan. This multi-dimensional approach will make stakeholders more enthusiastic to tackle underwater noise pollution while enhancing the efficient use of capacities and resources.

Introduction

Although shipping contributes to carriage of 80% of global trade by volume and more than 70% by value (UNCTAD, 2019) and is the most cost-effective and efficient type of transportation (Buhaug et al., 2009), it has negative externalities. One of the new emerging environmental issue from ships is Under Water Noise (UWN) pollution.

Anthropogenic noise emissions into oceans have increased over the past fifty years (MEPC 73/INF.23). For example, due to increase of commercial vessels traffic, (low frequency) UWN pollution has doubled in intensity every decade for the past 60 years in some parts of the North Pacific Ocean (NRC, 2003; Hildebrand, 2009), and the Adriatic Sea sub-region experiences high noise pressure in the marine waters (Codarin and Picciulin, 2015). Due to introduce of bigger ships to the global fleet, further sailing distance, as well as the introduction of more shipping routes, commercial vessels become the primary source for propagation of low-frequency noise within and beyond national jurisdictions. The combination of bigger and nosier ships, and further shipping distances could increase UWN from the three main types of vessels (container ships, bulk careers, tankers) by 87–102% on average by 2030 (Kaplan and Solomon, 2016).

UWN is a type of an energy (UNCLOS, 1982) and can be consider as a type of pollution (Vakili, 2018). In contrast to other types of ships' pollutants like oil and marine litter, UWN is not visible and it requires a proper scientific approach to make its environmental and socio-economic impacts known to society. UWN pollution has negative affect on marine species (Weilgart, 2018), as well as negative socio-economic effects, especially on Small Islands Developing States whose economic development, government revenue, food and job security, and subsistence largely depend on oceans, fishing industry, and marine tourism (ICP, 2018). Although there are knowledge gaps still exist regarding the negative impacts of UWN pollution from ships, based on the precautionary principle, actions must be taken to control, mitigate, and monitor UWN radiation from commercial vessels (Markus and Sánchez, 2018), and is crucial that International Maritime Organization (IMO) take appropriate actions to adopt an international legally binding instrument to regulates UWN from commercial vessels (Vakili et al., 2020a).

Vakili et al. (2020a) proposed a plan of actions to mitigate UWN pollution from commercial vessels. The document highlighted the importance of precautionary principles and proposed further actions such as raising awareness, design and develop a policy for the shipping companies, design of “Noise Technical File” and other actions to control, mitigate, and monitor UWN pollution from commercial vessels. In continuation of the mentioned document, Vakili et al. (2020b) developed an underwater noise management plan for ports. In the document, the authors highlighted that to raise awareness and mitigation of UWN pollution from commercial vessels decision-makers must become familiar with the source of UWN from commercial vessels. Additionally, the document concluded that to control, mitigate and monitoring UWN pollution from commercial vessels holistic, systematic and multi-interdisciplinary approach with the collaboration of all stakeholders is required.

Taking the above into account and in continuation of the mentioned articles, this study after introducing UWN pollution from commercial ships and the drivers regarding consideration UWN pollution from commercial vessels, elaborates on sources of underwater noise in commercial vessels. This leads to raising awareness about the main sources of UWN pollution from commercial vessels for ship owners and operators. In Part 3, the authors highlight IMO's and stakeholders' priorities regarding shipping issues and provide a transdisciplinary policy for shipping companies to mitigate UWN noise from their commercial vessels. The proposed measures are in line with improved energy-efficient measures and IMO's initial Greenhouse Gas (GHG) strategy. Discussion is presented in part 4, and finally, in part 5, the conclusion is presented.

Section snippets

Sources of underwater noise in commercial vessels

The international benchmarking study regarding the IMO Guidelines for the reduction of underwater noise from commercial shipping to address adverse impacts on marine life, showed that many shipping companies are not aware of both the source of UWN pollution and the guidelines in reduction of UWN pollution from commercial shipping (MEPC 74/17/2, 2019). Additionally, due to lack of awareness about UWN pollution from commercial vessels, IMO at the last MEPC meeting (76th) in June 2021, decided to

Transdisciplinary policy for shipping companies to mitigate UWN noise from commercial vessels

As ship owners, operators, and ports consider higher priorities for energy efficiency regulations in comparison with UWN guidelines (Vakili et al., 2020a; Vakili et al., 2020b), next steps in mitigation of UWN pollution from commercial vessels must be in line with energy efficiency regulations.

IMO adopted its first GHG strategy on MEPC 72 and demonstrated its commitment to reducing GHG emissions. The strategy aims to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% annually by 2050

Discussion

Due to the complexity of UWN pollution, it is a complicated task to mitigate it from commercial vessels. However, due to the negative impacts of UWN pollutions, it is essential that decision-makers take appropriate actions to mitigate, control, and monitor UWN pollution from commercial vessels. To develop a policy framework for the reduction of UWN pollution from commercial vessels, an integrated approach with consideration of many connections among air pollution, energy efficiency, climate

Conclusion

Although shipping has a crucial role in human welfare, it has negative externalities. One of the newly emerging environmental issues from commercial shipping is UWN pollution, which has negative socio-economic impacts. A significant portion of the anthropogenic UWN pollution is related to commercial shipping, and IMO recognizes that UWN pollution from commercial vessels have both short and long-term negative consequences on marine life, especially marine mammals.

There are currently no

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Seyedvahid Vakili: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Aykut I. Ölcer: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Fabio Ballini: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the reviewers for their comments which greatly improved the study.

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