In May 2012, Benjamin Boteler of Ecologic Institute was invited to present at the international conference "Key Developments in the Port and Maritime Sector" on the latest developments in EU and international environmental policy and their implications for the sector. The conference, held in Antwerp (Belgium) and organised by the World Conference on Transport Research Society - Special Interest Groups 2 Maritime and Ports, brought together a rich mix of academics, industry representatives, and policy makers to present and discuss state-of-the-art scientific developments in the sector.
Benjamin Boteler presented the paper "European maritime transport and port activities: identifying policy gaps towards reducing environmental impacts of socio-economic activities" [pdf, 365 KB, English], which was written with fellow researchers Max Grünig and Manuel Lago of Ecologic Institute.
At the conference, Benjamin Boteler explained that several environmental pressures created by the maritime transport and port sector are not covered under international or EU policy, although EU Member States at the same time have an increasing obligation to protect and conserve their marine waters under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Of particular interest to the audience was the potential inclusion of maritime transport within the European Union Emissions Trading System. The paper was the result of Ecologic Institute’s research within the European Environment Agency’s European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine waters (ETC-ICM).