Shipping and the Ecosystem Approach

Shipping is a global activity, and its environmental impacts are largely regulated in a harmonized way at the international level. This minimizes the impediments to navigation that may result from a regulatory landscape characterised by local variation. The ecosystem approach on the other hand calls for measures to be adaptable to the specific conditions at ecologically relevant scales. This results in a tension between core tenets of ecosystem-based management and the established practice for regulating international shipping. While there is some room for coastal States to set area-specific rules for shipping when warranted by local conditions, the competence for doing so is circumscribed, and beyond the territorial sea little can be done without international agreement. There is potential for making better use of some existing legal instruments, both by individual States and by the international community, to enable better responsiveness to local conditions. Recent years have also seen increased international recognition of the need for affording special protection to some areas, such as the polar regions. Local measures should only be sought when there is clear value in area-based management at that level. This is the case for some environmental pressures, but not for others. The centralised nature of the regulation of shipping creates a pressure for international standards that are stringent enough to make additional measures superfluous in most cases.