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Environmental Compliance and Practices of Cruise Ships in Iceland an Exploratory Case Study - Port of Ísafjörður

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Environmental Compliance and Practices of Cruise Ships in Iceland an Exploratory Case Study - Port of Ísafjörður Master’s thesis Environmental Compliance and Practices of Cruise Ships in Iceland An Exploratory Case Study - port of Ísafjörður Sheng Ing Wang Advisor: Catherine Chambers, Ph.D. University of Akureyri Faculty of Business and Science University Centre of the Westfjords Master of Resource Management: Coastal and Marine Management Ísafjörður, May 2020 Supervisory Committee Advisor: Catherine Chambers, Ph.D. External Reader: Auður H. Ingólfsdóttir, Ph.D. Program Director: Catherine Chambers, Ph.D. Sheng Ing Wang Environmental compliance and practices of cruise ships in Iceland An exploratory case study – port of Ísafjörður 45 ECTS thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of a Master of Resource Management degree in Coastal and Marine Management at the University Centre of the Westfjords, Suðurgata 12, 400 Ísafjörður, Iceland Degree accredited by the University of Akureyri, Faculty of Business and Science, Borgir, 600 Akureyri, Iceland Copyright © 2020 Sheng Ing Wang All rights reserved Printing: Háskólaprent, Reykjavík, May 2020 Declaration I hereby confirm that I am the sole author of this thesis and it is a product of my own academic research. __________________________________________ Sheng Ing Wang Abstract The drastic growth of cruise tourism in the world, while potentially beneficial for economic growth in local communities, can also bring many problems and concerns, especially regarding impacts to the environment. This research took the port of Ísafjörður, Iceland, a recent hotspot destination for cruise ships, as a case study for better understanding the potential environmental impacts from cruise ships. The study’s aims were: 1) to determine how much and what kind of waste generated from cruise ships had been discharged to the shore facilities in Ísafjörður in 2019, and 2) to explore the compliance behaviour of the ships in adhering to Icelandic and international environmental regulations. To do this, quantitative and qualitative questions were assessed by interviewing officers from 40 cruise ships, accounting for 87% of the total ships that docked and anchored in Ísafjörður in the 2019 cruise ship season. The interview questions were designed based on the convention of MARPOL and the law of Iceland, and these questions were compared with the ship’s statutory record or ship’s certificates to strengthen the reliability and correctness of the data. The interview questions covered five categories: emissions, waste oil, wastewater, garbage and food waste, and ballast water. Results showed that very little garbage and food waste had been discharged to shore facilities, and this was likely because Ísafjörður is one of several stops for many cruise ships in Iceland and the waste had simply been discharged elsewhere. However, in assessing the other four categories, eight out of 40 cruise ships carried out illegal activities, including 12 specific violation cases. This thesis discusses three primary possible reasons for those violations: accessibility, inconsistency, and monitoring, and then gives three examples of incentive for improving compliance behaviour in the cruise industry without imposing a law. Interested parties such as local communities, national decision makers, tourism boards, municipal planners, and environmental agencies must use the best available knowledge such as this study to manage the positive and negative aspects of the growth of cruise ship tourism. v Útdráttur Gríðarleg aukning í ferðaþjónustu skemmtiferðaskipa í heiminum hefur mögulega jákvæð staðbundin efnahagslega áhrif en getur á sama tíma haft í för með sér vandamál og áhyggjuefni, einkum hvað varðar umhverfið. Í þessari rannsókn er Ísafjarðarhöfn á Íslandi, sem er ört vaxandi áfangastaður skemmtiferðaskipa, notuð sem tilviksrannsókn til að skilja betur möguleg umhvefisleg áhrif skemmtiferðaskipa. Markmið rannsóknarinnar voru eftirfarandi: 1) að ákvarða magn og tegund úrgangs sem skemmtiferðaskip losuðu við höfn á Ísafirði árið 2019, og 2) kanna hver vel skipin fylgja íslenskum og alþjóðlegum umhverfisreglugerðum. Megindlegar og eigindlegar spurningar voru metnar með viðtölum við yfirmenn 40 skemmtiferðaskipa, eða alls 87% allra skipa sem komu í höfn á Ísafirði á komutímabili skipanna árið 2019. Viðtalsspurningarnar byggðu á MARPOL sáttmálanum og íslenskum lögum. Einnig voru spurningarnar bornar saman við lögboðnar skrár skipanna eða vottorð þeirra, til að styrkja áreiðanleika og nákvæmni gagnanna. Spurningarnar í viðtölunum náðu yfir fimm flokka: Útblástur; úrgangsolíu; skólp; rusl og matarúrgang og kjölfestuvatn. Niðurstöðurnar sýna að mjög lítið af rusli og matarúrgangi er losaður á Ísafirði. Líklegt má telja að ástæðan sé sú að Ísafjörður er aðeins einn af mörgum áfangastöðum skipanna á Íslandi og að þessi hluti úrgangs skipanna sé einfaldlega losaður annarrstaðar. Þegar hinir fjórir úrgangsflokkarnir voru metnir kom í ljós að átta skip af fjörtíu framkvæmdu ólöglegar aðgerðir í tólf tilvikum. Í ritgerðinni er fjallað um þrjár mögulegar meigin ástæður fyrir þessum brotum: Aðgengi; óssamræmi og eftirlit. Í framhaldinu eru sett fram þrjú dæmi um hvata fyrir skipin til að fara að lögum án þess að breyta þeim lagaramma sem nú þegar er til staðar. Mikilvægt er að hagsmunaaðilar, á borð við vöktunar- og rannsóknaraðilar umhverfisins, nærsamfélögin, skipulagsyfirvöld og ferðaþjónustan, nýti sér nýjustu fáanlegu þekkingu, á borð við þessa rannsókn, til að stýra jákvæðum og neikvæðum áhrifum fjölgunar skemmtiferðaskipa. vi Thanks for my left ankle, without hurting you, this thesis won’t exist vii viii Table of Contents Declaration ........................................................................................................................ viii Abstract ................................................................................................................................ v Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ ix List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... xi List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... xii Glossary/ Abbreviations ................................................................................................... xiii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ xv 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Cruise ship tourism ................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Ísafjörður as a cruise ship destination ................................................................... 3 1.3 Research aims, justification, and outline of the thesis ........................................... 6 2 Conceptual and Literature Review ............................................................................ 9 2.1 Environmental impacts of cruise ships .................................................................. 9 2.2 Overview of international regulations ................................................................. 11 2.3 Icelandic legal framework for preventing pollution from ships .......................... 13 2.4 Regulation of vessel-source pollution in Iceland ................................................ 14 2.4.1 Emission/ Air pollution ............................................................................... 14 2.4.2 Oil ................................................................................................................ 15 2.4.3 Wastewater (Icelandic: skolp) ..................................................................... 15 2.4.4 Garbage and food waste .............................................................................. 16 2.4.5 Ballast water ................................................................................................ 16 2.4.6 Summary of the rules within territorial water ............................................. 16 2.5 Comparison between Icelandic and international rules ....................................... 18 2.5.1 Definition Comparison ................................................................................ 18 2.5.2 Regulations Comparison ............................................................................. 19 3 Methodology ............................................................................................................... 23 3.1 Informant enrollment, informed consent, and protection of sensitive data ......... 23 ix 3.2 Semi-structured interview design ........................................................................ 24 3.3 Data Analysis ...................................................................................................... 26 3.4 Limitations and author positionality reflections .................................................. 27 4 Results ........................................................................................................................ 29 4.1 General characteristics of cruise ships ................................................................ 29 4.2 Waste discharged to the shore facility ................................................................. 30 4.3 Rule compliance and practices ............................................................................ 32 4.3.1 Emission/
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