Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Port state control and club goods
To the extent that the CPR structure is a major underlying cause of ocean environmental
problems, it should be no surprise that one potential solution is to attempt a regulatory
process that changes the structure of the issue by the creation of club goods. A club (or
toll) good has the opposite structure of a CPR: it is both excludable and non-rival. Free
trade agreements are the quintessential example of club goods: those states that join the
agreements gain the advantages of free trade with others in the agreement (a good that is
not diluted - and, in fact, can even be improved by increasing numbers of participants),
and those that remain outside of the agreement do not gain those bene
ts. To the extent
that a club can be created for a CPR issue, states will have an incentive to conform to envi-
ronmental protection norms to gain access to the club.
The club that has had an impact on pollution standards (including oil pollution)
observed by ships is the process of port state control (PSC). Port state control has come
to be important in determining the standards ship owners uphold, particularly with
respect to environmental and safety regulation. Detaining ships in port is the
fi
rst line of
defense against substandard ships; states use their sovereign authority over their territo-
rial waters to prevent substandard ships from accessing the location to which they intend
to transport goods.
States in regional groupings have created Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) for
the inspection of ships when they come into port. The primary locus of authority for the
broad jurisdiction of PSC comes from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the
Sea (UNCLOS) (1982). The UNCLOS provisions build on nascent (but not previously
well-developed) aspects of international law that see ports as part of the sovereign terri-
tory of a state and thus an area to which states have the ability to restrict access. The
MOUs generally make no new laws pertaining to ships; they refer to existing international
agreements, most under the IMO, on labor, safety and environmental protection that ship
owners must uphold.
States within each regional MOU agree to inspect a certain percentage of the ships that
enter their ports, and share information with the other states in the agreement about their
fi
fi
ndings. If a ship owner is not following the most important international rules with
respect to ship safety (regardless of what obligations its
ag state requires), and especially
if the ship is currently in bad condition, the ship can be detained until its condition has
been improved such that it does not pose a threat to the ocean environment or to the safety
of those who work on it (Özçcayir, 2001).
One of the most important aspects of PSC is that the inspectors explicitly discriminate
in how they choose ships for inspection. Because they can only inspect a portion of the
ships that arrive and would prefer to inspect those with the greatest likelihood of posing
environmental problems, they choose to inspect ships that they expect are most likely to
exhibit problems. They have therefore created formulas of characteristics of ships that are
suspected of being especially risky, including the ship's previous inspection and detention
record. Another important characteristic is the record of the ship's
fl
fl
ag state.
ag states, ships registered in states that are not parties to the interna-
tional agreements covered by the MOU are more likely to be targeted. This practice pro-
vides an ironic twist on the way international law generally operates: through this process
ships
In the case of
fl
agged in states that have not adopted international standards can nevertheless be
held to them in the inspection process, even though their
fl
fl
ag states do not require that
