Despite international rules and regulations, cross-border differences in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) can create real safety risks when handling dangerous goods, according to a report from the European Union-funded project DaGoB – Safe and Reliable Transport Chains of Dangerous Goods in the Baltic Sea Region.<\/strike><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
DaGoB’s research has revealed that up to 1bn tonnes of dangerous goods are transported in the BSR every year – more than three times the volume that was anticipated when the project was set up two years ago. The high level reflects the position of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland in handling a high level of transit traffic for Russia – which, critically, operates with a different set of regulations to the EU.<\/p>\n
The report highlights differences in the application of international regulations and says operational practices vary substantially between and even within countries. There are also differences in the way professionals are being trained, it says. It calls for better information exchange between dangerous goods authorities and between these authorities and the private sector, and for further cooperation in the field of inspection of dangerous goods.<\/p>\n
“On the maritime side, Russia is of course a signatory to the IMO but harmonisation of regulations on the more local level is difficult,” says scientist Professor Lauri Ojala of Turku School of Economics, the lead partner in DaGoB. “Estonia and the other Baltic States are at the crossroads of two different types of regimes. They actually have to manage two types of regulatory frameworks, and they have a lot of transit traffic.”<\/p>\n
According to recent figures, dangerous goods make up 67% of Estonia’s sea-transported goods, 57% in Lithuania and 42% each in Latvia and Finland.<\/p>\n
One of the most important results of DaGoB is the significantly increased level of cross-border cooperation between the authorities involved, says the report.<\/p>\n
The ports of Tallinn, Riga and Klaipeda are all partners in the project. Tallinn’s chief harbour master, Artur Kivistik, says the project – a follow-up DaGoB 2 is planned – has been essential for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n
“It has drawn more attention to dangerous cargo transport through our ports and on the rail,” he told partners at the closing conference in Tallinn. “In the framework of this project, cooperation with other countries’ dangerous goods specialists has been established.<\/p>\n
“Very important for the Port of Tallinn is that we have also reached a better level of cooperation with Estonian national players in this sector.”<\/p>\n
Within the framework of the project, Tallinn revised all of its procedures concerning dangerous cargo and possible consequences – “as I believe other ports did”, he said. A major exercise was organised in the port’s largest harbour, Muuga, to test its abilities to cope with a dangerous cargo incident in port, and a new emergency prevention and solution handbook is being put together.<\/p>\n
Among the key findings of the DaGoB report has been a “complex network” of authorities and agencies working with dangerous goods “that one has to know in order to be able to get a clear picture of the situation”. In addition a survey showed that the IT systems used in BSR ports were mainly country-specific and\/or developed inside each port. The concrete level of cooperation between BSR ports in IT systems and infrastructure was very low.<\/p>\n
The European SafeSeaNet centralised database for dangerous goods cargo information will be mandatory in the next few years, says DaGoB. Larger IT projects at ports appear to have been put on hold until the EC finalises the regulations concerning SSN, it says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Differing dangerous goods rules in European countries and even within the same countries need to be addressed. Felicity Landon explains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terminal-operations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6939"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}