15 - Environmental Impacts of Shipping

Summary

The DPSIR (drivers, pressures, state, impact and response) framework provides a useful conceptual model for assessing and managing problems arising from the interactions between ships and the environment. The DPSIR framework comprises: drivers – the causes of environmental problem (e.g., ship operations); pressures – the effects of the activity (e.g., ship emissions); state – the environmental parameters and components that are affected (e.g., marine ecosystems); impact – the effect exerted on environmental and biological reservoirs (e.g., invasive species, habitat modification); and responses – mechanisms put into effect to prevent and/or mitigate the environmental impacts (e.g., environmental policies, international conventions). A well-established cycle of processes characterizes the continuous means of protecting the marine environment from the deleterious effects of ships. Both end-of-life events – either by shipwreck or shipbreaking – and routine operational performance of vessels exert, respectively, acute and chronic environmental impacts.