Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
half-century and contributed to the increasing reliance on ships for international trade.
Shipbuilding has gone through several revolutionary changes over the years. The most
recent began in the early 1970s. That decade saw a dramatic change in the scale of inter-
national shipping. A revolution in technology made possible sizes of ships that had pre-
viously been unimaginable. The capacity of oil tankers increased more than tenfold, cargo
ships increased by a factor of 20 in a two-decade period, and new container vessels were
seven times larger than conventional break bulk liners (Couper, 1999).
Technologies also developed over the past four decades that have signi
cantly reduced
the cost of shipping many categories of goods. One is the automation of port facilities -
heavy machinery now does much of the work that stevedores and dockworkers used
to (Kahveci, 2000). Another is the development of containerization. This technology
involves putting goods in standardized containers. The containers are loaded onto the
decks of purpose-built ships, and can be transferred to trains or trucks without being
unpacked. This makes it faster to load and unload ships, and easier to track goods in ship-
ment and in port (Levinson, 2006; Cudahy, 2006). Finally, recent developments in infor-
mation and communication technologies have made it cheaper and easier both to track
goods in shipment and to organize the shipping industry on a global scale.
The globalization of production and decreasing barriers to trade have also made ship-
ping
fi
nished goods or parts thereof easier from a political and economic standpoint. And
decreasing shipping costs mean that it makes more sense than it previously did to produce
halfway around the globe and take advantage of lower production costs rather than
produce in the intended market to avoid transportation costs.
At the same time the pro
fi
t margins for those running ships have become increasingly
narrow. States subsidized their shipbuilding industries and global shipping capacity
increased, and by the 1980s there was more shipping capacity available than demand for
it (Broeze, 1998). Many individuals borrowing money to
fi
nance the building of newer
and bigger ships defaulted on their loans, and when ships were repossessed the govern-
ments or banks that now owned them continued to operate them (usually through the cre-
ation of management companies) rather than scrap them, which continued the downward
pressure on freight rates. In addition, industries - such as oil producers and steel corpo-
rations - that had previously run their own shipping lines bowed out, preferring instead
to hire the services of ships owned by others. Independent ship owners competitively
reduced their fees in order to compete for this shipping business (Couper, 1999, p. 11).
These factors have combined to make global shipping increasingly concerned about
keeping costs low. The main ways to do so are to avoid high fees and taxes involved with
ship registration, and to avoid the costly equipment, rules and labor protections imposed
by international rules.
fi
Flags of convenience and international environmental law
International law is made by states. They collectively negotiate international rules, and
only those states that accept the rules (most commonly by ratifying treaties that have been
negotiated) are bound by them. The standards to which a ship is held are determined by
the state in which that ship is registered. Under international law all ships must have a
nationality; the ship is then bound by all the domestic and international regulations
adopted by that state. Until the mid-twentieth century ship owners primarily registered
their ships in the states in which they were citizens; in most cases that was the only option
