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Any country can, if they choose, regulate their registered ships.

by a3n 10y ago

rosser 10y ago
They should also be able to regulate ships that enter their territorial waters. "Oh, you burn bunker oil and don't scrub the exhaust? Can't dock here..."
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Or charge a very high docking fee for all, with correspondingly large discounts for incentivized technology/fuel.
- amorphid 10y ago
  At least one airport does this with planes, John Wayne Airport in Orange County, CA. In the 1980s, they implemented stricter controls over how much noise planes flying in & out can make. [1] On related note, FedEx flew (flies?) Boeing 727s, a rather noisy plane by commercial jet standards. They knew that plane noise was increasingly become an undesirable trait, and managing noise levels needed to be made a priority. At some point, FedEx decided to that retrofitting 727s to produce less noise was a sound investment, so they built a hush kit. [2] It'd be interesting to learn whether the development of hush kits was a proactive and/or reactive decision. I suspect that a large enough country like the USA could heavily incentivize for more efficient shipping. The USA could levy a tax on goods shipped via inefficient ships. All they'd have to do is have enough information about the supply chain to reasonably enforce the tax. Sure, dodging the tax could be gamed, but compliance is a different issue. While the USA couldn't tell Canadian ports what to do, they could tax goods which entered Canadian ports when those goods enter the USA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Airport#Aircraft_noise_abatement_and_curfew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Airport#Aircraft_no... [2] http://www.fedex.com/us/hushkit/history/index.html http://www.fedex.com/us/hushkit/history/index.html
mc32 10y ago
True but then the ships will just register in the next ship registry haven, ships, however, need to dock in busy ports, Rotterdam, Yokohama, Singapore, Shanghai, etc.
dredmorbius 10y ago
There's something of a Gresham's Law of ships registries, whereby ship's owners seek the least-regulated possibly registry, known as flags of convenience: As of 2009, more than half of the world’s merchant ships were registered with open registries, and the Panama, Liberia, and Marshall Islands flags accounted for almost 40% of the entire world fleet, in terms of deadweight tonnage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience And yes, though I'd only just thought of the concept, there's literature on it, e.g., https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03195134 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03195134
- gozur88 10y ago
  This. Making rules and taxes for ships registered under your flag has no effect other than to have ships registered under other flags. Regulating ships in open waters is difficult. If US environmental rules became too much of a hassle companies would ship to Mexico and into the US by rail, or the cargo would be transferred in nearby ports to ships that complied with regulations.

Any country can, if they choose, regulate their registered ships.

by a3n 10y ago

Any country can, if they choose, regulate their registered ships.

They should also be able to regulate ships that enter their territorial waters. "Oh, you burn bunker oil and don't scrub the exhaust? Can't dock here..."

sokoloff 10y ago
Or charge a very high docking fee for all, with correspondingly large discounts for incentivized technology/fuel.
amorphid 10y ago
At least one airport does this with planes, John Wayne Airport in Orange County, CA. In the 1980s, they implemented stricter controls over how much noise planes flying in & out can make. [1] On related note, FedEx flew (flies?) Boeing 727s, a rather noisy plane by commercial jet standards. They knew that plane noise was increasingly become an undesirable trait, and managing noise levels needed to be made a priority. At some point, FedEx decided to that retrofitting 727s to produce less noise was a sound investment, so they built a hush kit. [2] It'd be interesting to learn whether the development of hush kits was a proactive and/or reactive decision. I suspect that a large enough country like the USA could heavily incentivize for more efficient shipping. The USA could levy a tax on goods shipped via inefficient ships. All they'd have to do is have enough information about the supply chain to reasonably enforce the tax. Sure, dodging the tax could be gamed, but compliance is a different issue. While the USA couldn't tell Canadian ports what to do, they could tax goods which entered Canadian ports when those goods enter the USA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Airport#Aircraft_noise_abatement_and_curfew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Airport#Aircraft_no... [2] http://www.fedex.com/us/hushkit/history/index.html http://www.fedex.com/us/hushkit/history/index.html

mc32 10y ago

True but then the ships will just register in the next ship registry haven, ships, however, need to dock in busy ports, Rotterdam, Yokohama, Singapore, Shanghai, etc.

dredmorbius 10y ago

There's something of a Gresham's Law of ships registries, whereby ship's owners seek the least-regulated possibly registry, known as flags of convenience: As of 2009, more than half of the world’s merchant ships were registered with open registries, and the Panama, Liberia, and Marshall Islands flags accounted for almost 40% of the entire world fleet, in terms of deadweight tonnage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience And yes, though I'd only just thought of the concept, there's literature on it, e.g., https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03195134 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03195134

gozur88 10y ago
This. Making rules and taxes for ships registered under your flag has no effect other than to have ships registered under other flags. Regulating ships in open waters is difficult. If US environmental rules became too much of a hassle companies would ship to Mexico and into the US by rail, or the cargo would be transferred in nearby ports to ships that complied with regulations.