Posted on 22 September
2010
Despite promises to use port facilities
to offload waste water,
more than half of the cruise ships in the
Baltic Sea still dump their toilet water
straight into the sea, WWF revealed today.
To this end, WWF is
demanding a ban on waste water dumping in
the Baltic ahead of an international meeting
next week.
In May 2009, ECC, an
organization representing the major cruise
companies operating in Europe, committed
to stop dumping their waste water in the
Baltic Sea “when certain conditions were
met”.
These conditions included
“adequate port reception facilities which
operate under a ‘no special fee’ agreement”.
Today, at least two major ports around the
Baltic Sea, Stockholm and Helsinki, meet
these conditions.
However, WWF revealed
today that most cruise ships do not use
these port facilities.
As the cruise season
ended last week, Stockholm had in all 240
ship visits in 2010. Of these 240, only
115 used existing port facilities and even
some of these 115 only offloaded small amounts,
suggesting that most of the sewage, even
from these, has been dumped at sea. At the
same time, the ports of St Petersburn, Tallin,
Riga, Klaipeda, Gdansk, Rostock and Copenhagen
still lack port facilities that meet the
demand of the cruise industry.
“The problem is that
there are no laws regulating this”, says
Mattias Rust of WWF. “Anything like this
would have been absolutely unthinkable on
land, but just because it is out of sight
for most of us, we still let it happen”.
A proposal to ban the
discharge of passenger ships was identified
as a priority action in the Baltic Sea Action
Plan (BSAP), agreed by all Baltic Sea countries
in 2007.
Next week, the worlds
shipping nations meet at the International
Maritime Organization in London to discuss
environmental issues. In a joint submission
from all the Baltic Sea states, the IMO
will be asked to “ban discharge of sewage
from passenger ships and ferries in the
Baltic Sea unless it has been sufficiently
treated to remove nutrients or delivered
to port reception facilities”.
The cruise industry
is a rapidly growing industry. In the last
ten years, the numbers of cruise passengers
in the Baltic Sea region has tripled and
now amounts to over 3 million. In Stockholm
only, 415,000 cruise passengers spent on
average 130 euro each, providing the city
with an income of 54 million euro.
In total, the Baltic
Sea receives more than 350 cruise ship visits
with over 2,100 port calls each year. The
waste-water produced in these vessels is
estimated to contain 113 tons of nitrogen
and 38 tons of phosphorus, substances that
add to eutrophication of the sea. Most of
this sewage is still discharged into the
Baltic Sea. In addition to excess nutrients,
the waste water also contains bacteria,
viruses and other pathogens, as well as
heavy metals.
“The cruise companies
as well as the cities that receive the ships
are making millions on this industry”, says
Mattias Rust. “They both share the responsibility
to solve the waste water problem.”
About IMO and MARPOL
The Marine Environment
Protection Committee (MEPC) of the United
Nations International Maritime Organization
(IMO) holds its 61st meeting in London 27
September to 1 October.
The IMO sets international
maritime vessel safety and marine pollution
standards under the MARPOL 73/78 convention.
The revised annex IV of MARPOL 73/78 concerning
rules on sewage treatment for ships entered
into force on 1 August 2005. The Annex IV
is one of the four voluntary annexes of
the MARPOL convention’s six annexes. The
annex sets out how sewage should be treated
or held aboard ships and how the discharge
into the sea may be allowed. It also requires
the parties to the convention to provide
adequate sewage reception facilities. The
annex only applies to ships engaged in international
voyages, of 400 gross tonnages and above
and ships of less than 400 tonnages that
are certified to carry more than 15 persons.
The Member States are responsible for the
vessel’s compliance with MARPOL, when flagged
under their respective nationalities.
The revised Annex IV
requires ships to be equipped with either
a sewage treatment plant, a sewage comminuting
(“reducing to minute particles”) and disinfecting
system, or a sewage holding tank. Discharge
of sewage is allowed when the ship is discharging
comminuted and disinfected sewage, using
an approved system, at a distance of more
than three nautical miles from the nearest
coast line, or sewage which is not disinfected
at a distance of more than twelve nautical
miles from the nearest land. Ships shall,
when discharging sewage that has been stored
in holding tanks or originating from spaces
containing living animals, always do so
at a moderate rate when the ship is en route
and proceeding in not less than four knots.
Furthermore, the effluent shall not produce
visible floating solids nor cause discoloration
of the surrounding water.
The discharge of sewage
is always permitted if is for the purpose
of securing the safety of the ship and those
on board, saving life at sea or if the discharge
is a result of damage to the ship or its
equipment and if all reasonable precautions
have been taken before and after to prevent
or minimize the discharge.
The revised Annex IV
requires the government of each party to
the convention to ensure the provision of
reception facilities for sewage at ports
and terminals, adequate to meet the needs
of the ships using them and without causing
delay to the ships.
As mentioned above,
Annex IV is only binding to the countries
signing on to this specific annex, but all
the countries around the Baltic Sea are
parties both to the MARPOL 73/78 convention
and to Annex IV.
In addition, the IMO’s
Marine Environment Protection Committee
(MEPC) has adopted recommendations and guidelines
related to the MARPOL 73/78 and the revised
Annex IV. These include standards for the
rate of discharge of untreated sewage from
ships and for onboard treatment facilities.
A Special Area is today
defined as "a sea area where for recognised
technical reasons in relation to its oceanographical
and ecological conditions and to the particular
character of its traffic, the adoption of
special mandatory methods for the prevention
of sea pollution by oil, noxious liquid
substances or garbage, as applicable, is
required." Under the Convention, these
Special Areas are provided with a higher
level of protection than other areas of
the sea.
The Baltic Sea countries
are now proposing to amend MARPOL Annex
IV to include the possibility to establish
“special areas” for the prevention of pollution
from sewage of passenger ships and to designate
the Baltic Sea as such a Special Area.
+ More
Markets force Romania,
Bulgaria to catch up on forest certification
Posted on 24 September
2010
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Friday,
the international day of sustainable forestry,
is being marked in Bulgaria and Romania
today in the hope that increased forest
certification will lead to better forest
management while creating new market opportunities
for the timber industry.
Romania aims to certify
40 percent of its forested areas by the
end of 2011, while Bulgaria hopes to reach
the 30 percent milestone in 2014.
“The interest in FSC
certification is on the increase in Romania”,
says Marius Turtica, Forest Certification
Officer at the WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme
based in Brasov, Romania. “Our aim is to
have around 40 FSC certified companies by
the end of this year, and to reach 2,6 million
hectares of FSC certified forests, out of
a total of 6,27 million hectares, by the
end of 2011.”
FSC Friday, according
to the organization’s website, is “a day
dedicated to the celebration of forests
around the globe, and the promotion of responsible
forest management worldwide.”
“On FSC Friday, people
are invited to investigate what’s in their
shopping basket, and look for the FSC logo.
Events related to FSC Friday take place
around the world with companies and supporters
promoting the FSC logo and what it stands
for.”
The first international FSC Friday took
place in Germany in 2009.
In Romania, companies
that have already been certified are those
that export their products to countries
like the UK, Italy, Germany and France.
Consumers in Western Europe are much more
sensitive to environmental impact and forest
management issues, and timber producers
in Eastern Europe are gradually waking up
to the fact that they must get certified
or lose out.
"The competition
on the veneer market is quite fierce and
each and every plus can make the difference
between success and failure", says
Claudiu Tanase, Quality and FSC Manager
of Losan Romania, a leading manufacturer
of decorative veneers, selling their products
worldwide.
“If a European client
is demanding an FSC certificate, timber
companies are very motivated to get certified”,
says Neli Dontcheva who runs the Forestry
Certification Information Centre in Sofia.
“At the information centre we often get
requests from people who have no idea what
FSC is, but know that they must get certified
or get dropped by their clients”.
“The problem we face
in Bulgaria is purely economical”, Dontcheva
explains. “Both the state – the biggest
proprietor of forests in the country – and
private owners want to go down this way,
but lack of financial resources is stopping
them”.
The Forestry Certification
Information Centre was established in 2005
as part of WWF's Sofia office with the purpose
of offering integrated information about
the forest certification process and its
practicalities. Various stakeholders in
Bulgaria have benefited from its services
over the years, and as a result 217,387
hectares of forests have been FSC certified,
out of a total of 4,130 000 hectares. But
the process hasn’t been as fast as in other
European countries.
During the construction
boom, which marked the past few years in
Bulgaria, the domestic market was big enough
to accommodate most if not all locally produced
wood. As a result there was no rush to change.
However, at the moment the demand for wood
domestically is small and Bulgarians are
starting to look to external markets where
export is so much harder if the wood is
not certified.
“During the last decade
forest certification has become a significant
market mechanism to promote responsible
forest management”, says Zhivko Bogdanov,
Forest Coordinator at the WWF Danube-Carpathian
Programme. “WWF has focused on promoting
FSC and helping countries like Bulgaria
and Romania adapt FSC standards to their
national contexts”, Bogdanov said.
The next step for Bulgaria
and Romania is to finalize their national
standards and to submit them to the Forest
Stewardship Council for approval. Although
the authorities in the two countries are
very supportive of FSC certification, bringing
together stakeholders with different backgrounds
from different parts of the country is a
challenge. Currently the two countries are
using the generic FSC standards. The national
standards, which could be ready by the end
of the year, are expected to be even more
rigid.
“The Bulgarian standard
for example will forbid clear cutting, since
this is stipulated in our national law”,
Bogdanov says. “This is also how nature
works around here. At these latitudes we
don’t get natural clearing of vast areas
simultaneously, which can be the case in
Northern Europe. When we follow natural
processes, we invest less and at the same
time have less impact on nature. This is
the idea of FSC.”
"It’s definitely
a matter of prestige for a forestry management
team to show that they can obtain an FSC
certificate", says Georgy Lapchev,
Deputy Director of State Forestry “Kosti”
in south-east Bulgaria which in 2005 became
the first Bulgarian forestry to receive
FSC certification. "At Kosti we always
believed that we were managing the forests
the right way, therefore the consistently
good results. We went through the certification
process mainly to make sure that we were
managing the forests well in every single
aspect".
FSC promotes environmentally
responsible, socially beneficial and economically
viable management of the world's forests,
by establishing a worldwide standard of
recognized and respected principles of forest
stewardship. Today, more than 125 million
ha of forest worldwide are certified to
FSC standards, distributed in over 80 countries.
This represents the equivalent of roughly
5 percent of the world’s productive forests.
Croatia currently has
more FSC certified forests than any other
nation in Eastern Europe with 94 percent
of total forest area certified. Poland is
quickly following suit with 76 percent.
The value of FSC
labeled sales is currently estimated at
over 20 billion USD worldwide. Companies
committed to using FSC include home-improvement
companies, publishers and retailers. Giants
like IKEA, B&Q and Home Depot already
support FSC.
