Contributions to Exchange of Experience Initiatives by

IMO, EMSA and Regional Organisations

Michel Girin

Director of Cedre.

SaferSeas / Management of Accidental Marine Pollution Seminar

• Dissemination of experience: he who faced a problem presents his decisions/actions to others, who may be interested

• Exchange of experience: different parties, having faced problems responding to similar situations discuss their respective decisions/actions, with the aim to do better next time

Exchanging Experience

• Dissemination of experience on response the Erika spill

• Exchange of experience on response to heavy fuel spills offshore

Examples

• Communicating one’s experience: focusing on the positive achievements or telling the truth to the negative points ?

• Party to exchange with: mutual confidence and mutual interest are required

•►A facilitator may be needed to convince the parties concerned to join and share

The limitations

• International: the IMO

• Europe: MCMP, EMSA, The Research framework and the Interreg programmes

• Regional: HELCOM, the Bonn, Lisbon and Barcelona Agreements

•►Cedre is technical adviser on marine pollution management to the French

delegations at all the above

The facilitators

• Worldwide seminars on particular thematics attached to the trio of International Conferences IOSC (USA), SPILLCON (Australia) and INTERSPILL (Europe)

• Ex: responding to heavy fuel oil spills, Brest, 2003

• ►Exchanges between scientists, industry and administrations, worldwide, low

frequency (next one : 2009)

IMO: the R&D Forums

• Incidents reviews at MCMP meetings

• The workshops, pilot studies, joint exercises and training sessions in the rolling plan

• The Eumarex exchange of experts programme

• ►Committee and plan terminated end of 2006.

► Programme integrated in civil security exchanges in mid 2007

Europe, DG Env, MCMP

Community framework for cooperation (2000-2006)

Objectives

• Support and supplement Member State’s efforts in the field of preparedness

• Improve Member State’s response• Promote efficient mutual assistance and cooperation

Current actions

• Management of a three-year rolling plan (workshops, pilot projects, exercises…)

• Community Information System (CIS)• Response to emergencies (via the Mechanism)

• Stays of a few days to a few weeks in a selected institution of another country

• Duration of programme: 5 years (2002-2006)

• Total experts exchanged: 120

• Countries first receivers: UK/Norway (18 Experts)

• Country first provider: Spain (24 Experts)

►A must for all involved in pollution response

Activities continue within the civil protection exchange programme

Example of MCMP achievement: the EUMAREX exchanges of

experts

• Thematic workshops : use of dispersants, response to HNS pollution...

• European reviews : oil spill recovery vessels, Eutopean cooperative projects...

• GroupS of European experts : satellite imagery, spill response...

• ►Progressively taking over the exchange of experience activities

in the terminated MCMP rolling plan

Europe, EMSA

• Places of refuge: cooperation, liability and compensation • Directive on port reception facilities for ship generated waste and cargo residues

• Implementation of Directive on ship-source pollution

• Pollution Response workshop for Bulgaria and Romania

• Revision of MARPOL annex VI

• Implementation of the HNS Convention

• Training for Bulgaria and Romania on the HNS Convention

• Ship-sourced Chemical Pollution at Sea: Risk, Preparedness & Response in Europe

• Ratification and Implementation of HNS and Bunkers Conventions

•Satellite Monitoring of Oil Spills over European Waters

•Use of Oil Spill Dispersants in European Waters

►Exchanges of experience + assistance to new members

Examples of recent EMSA workshops

• Cooperative research projects on all aspects of marine pollution prevention, response and impactss

• Development of improves tests, procedures and tools for response and response monitoring

►Progressively building the European scientific oil spill response know-how

Europe, Research framework programmes

•NEEDS: EU Energy needs for the future, externalities of oil transport

•DEEPP: Databank on potentially polluting shipwrecks

•INTERRISK: Interoperable GMES Services for Environmental Risk Management in Marine and Coastal Areas

•PRAGMA: Experimental tools to assess the extent and impact of a major oil spill

•RESPIL: Experimental impact study of 2 chemical pollutants

•OSH: Oil Sea Harvester, large offshore oil recovery vessel

•SPREEX: Spill response experience based research needs

•AMPERA: Optimisation of the EU Accidental Marine Pollution research effort

•ASMA: Survey, modelling and remote sensing techniques for Monitoring and Assessment of environmental impacts of submerged oil

►A wide variety of topics and participants

Examples of Cooperative Studies and Research Projects

Cooperative projects:

• to disseminate in local communities experience established at national level,

• to establish mutual assistance procedures between neighbouring communities

►Exchange of experience at local level

Europe, Interreg

Interreg South Western Atlantic:

• LOSTCONT: response to containers lost at sea. Partners from France, Spain, Portugal

• EROCIPS: Emergency Response to coastal Oil, Chemical and Inert Pollution from Shipping. Partners from UK, France, Spain, Portugal

• PRESTIGE: Experience gained from the Prestige incident. Partners from France, Spain

• ►Exchange of experience on practical matters

Examples of Interreg projects

• Helcom (Baltic), Bonn (North Sea) are self financed. Barcelona benefits of an IMO/EU financed facilitator (REMPEC)

•The information/services a country gets is what others bring in: incident reviews at technical meetings, mutual aid

• In the most advanced: a joint oil spill response manual, joint oil spil response exercises, with intercalibration

• ►Serving prioritarily operational response needs

Regional Agreements

• The mutual information on pollution incidents

• The common “color code” for slick thickness assessment

• The yearly operational spills in the North Sea map

• The joint oil spill response manual• The invitations to join members exercises• The mutual assistance agreement

• ►Tackling all aspects of the response package

Examples: Bonn agreement

• incident response archivist• technical adviser• operator of test facilities• partner in development projects• specialised trainer

Dissemination and exchange of experience are permanent

activities at Cedre as: