ICS Lobbying for Ballast Convention Solution ahead of IMO Meeting

The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and its member national shipowners’ associations are engaged in the final flurry of lobbying for removing implementation hurdles of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Ballast Water Management Convention.

The Convention is expected to enter into force during 2016.

“The industry fully supports the objectives of the IMO Convention and the standards that governments have set for killing unwanted marine micro-organisms that can be transported in ships’ ballast water.
  
But shipping companies still lack confidence that the very expensive new equipment required will be regarded as fully compliant by governments, even though it has been typed-approved, unless serious implementation problems with the Convention are addressed at next week’s crucial meeting of the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC),” ICS said in a release.

According to the Chamber, the issues that governments need to address include the lack of robustness of the current IMO type-approval process for the expensive new treatment equipment, the criteria to be used for sampling ballast water during Port State Control inspections, and the need for ‘grandfathering’ of type-approved equipment already or about to be fitted.  

ICS said it has made a detailed submission to the MEPC explaining the industry’s concerns and a proposed way forward in an MEPC Resolution. The Resolution would serve as a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ by IMO Member States that necessary actions will be taken with respect to the Convention’s implementation as soon as it enters into force, and that shipowners who have installed new equipment, in good faith, and who operate and maintain it correctly, will not be unfairly penalised. 

“ ICS believes that there is now greater understanding of the industry’s concern that new equipment, which has been type-approved in accordance with agreed IMO standards, might subsequently be deemed to be non-complaint.  There is growing recognition that it is unreasonable to expect shipowners to invest millions of dollars per ship without any certainty that the equipment will not have to be completely replaced.”

ICS commended the Government of Canada’s efforts to  acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, however,  the solution that Canada has proposed to IMO “does nothing to address the industry’s fundamental concerns and could actually make implementation even more complicated by introducing a new concept of “minor exceedance” of the Convention’s discharge standards. ” 

 ICS added that IMO Member States are being strongly encouraged to consider the draft MEPC Resolution proposed by the industry as the base document for the development of a solution by IMO.