The Polar Code is being co-ordinated by the Sub-Committee on Ship Design and Construction (SDC). At its first session (20 to 24 January 2014), the SDC Sub-Committee agreed in principle to the draft and also the proposed draft amendments to IMO\u2019s safety and pollution prevention treaties to make it mandatory.<\/p>\n
But some have said that the IMO needs to do more to address black carbon emissions, ballast water and oil spills, which they say have not yet been addressed in the draft.<\/p>\n
An IMO spokesperson responded to GreenPort<\/em> that black carbon emissions have no definition as yet so can\u2019t be included in the draft code. The Sub-Committee on Pollution Prevention and Response (PPR) is due to meet from 3 to 7 February 2014 and three definitions are being put forward for discussion.<\/p>\n With regards to ballast water, because the BWT treaty is not yet in force it also can not yet be incorporated into the code.<\/p>\n The spokesperson pointed out that oil spills do not need to be mentioned as a separate item under the code because the Prevention of Pollution act, among others, deals with the safety aspects of preventing incidents or accidents that may cause spills.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all a question of timing,\u201d the IMO spokesperson told GP<\/em>. \u201cThe code is in draft format to allow all stakeholders to put forward their views and so we can work towards a code in place that will be to be implemented properly.\u201d<\/p>\n The Polar Code is intended to cover the full range of shipping-related matters relevant to navigation in waters surrounding the two poles \u2013 ship design, construction and equipment; operational and training concerns; search and rescue; and the protection of the unique environment and eco-systems of the polar regions.<\/p>\n The draft code will go forward to the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) and the Marine Safety Committee (MSC) in April and May 2014, so it could be adopted as soon as then or it could go back to the sub-committees for more work.<\/p>\n IMO is working towards getting the code ratified in late 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not everyone is happy with the IMO\u2019s draft Polar Code, some say it is failing to address the looming danger of poorly prepared ships traversing the ice waters between the poles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-5054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-products-services-greenport"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5056,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054\/revisions\/5056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5054"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=5054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}