ENVIRONMENT

ENVIRONMENT Ports determine and address key sustainability issues using the Green Marine framework By David Bolduc Green Marine’s Executive Director

Globalized trade has significantly increased the demands on ports at the same time as the public is seeking to reclaim waterfront areas for residential and recreational greenspace. Changing expectations by urban dwellers for vacant or formerly industrialized land is making it more difficult to obtain approval for new development or expansion projects.

Social expectations are likely to mount with people having a glimpse of how some of Nature has been able to rebound during the COVID-19 slowdown. Fortunately, a significant proportion of North America’s port community has effectively been addressing these challenges for well over a decade through the Green Marine environmental certification program.

Green Marine currently has 48 port authorities and 58 terminal operations voluntarily participating in the program in Canada and the United States, as well as nine port-specific association members.

All participants use detailed criteria to determine and publish their annual efforts on a 1 (monitoring of regulations) to 5 (excellence and leadership) scale. Results are reviewed by an independent verifier to ensure the program’s rigour. The bar for Levels 2 through 5 has also been raised a number of times to keep the criteria sufficiently challenging beyond existing regulations, emerging technologies, and new best practices. The program also requires certain yearover-year improvement. The program’s Participating terminal operators, port authorities, ship owners, and shipyard managers have not only welcomed challenges beyond regulations but have addressed newly emerging issues...

revision is done with substantial input from key governmental, scientific, environmental and community stakeholders, alongside the participants.

The program has significantly expanded in terms of the issues that it addresses since its founding 13 years ago. Participating terminal operators, port authorities, ship owners, and shipyard managers have not only welcomed challenges beyond regulations but have addressed newly emerging issues, such as community relations at ports. Underwater noise is another example.

Meanwhile, the program’s very first performance indicators for ports to reduce air emissions and greenhouse gases remain as relevant as ever and have become even more demanding with Level 5, for example, now requiring a yearly reduction target. In keeping with Green Marine’s collaborative approach, the new criteria was established by a workgroup that involved the representatives of several ports of different sizes, along with the relevant governments, academia and environmental NGOs.

Tools and technologies

Green Marine does its best to provide participants with the means to achieve the program’s goals. For example, Green Marine has licensed the Ports Emissions Inventory (PEIT) from Transport Canada for use by all participants in benchmarking and reducing emissions in a readily measurable, consistent way. Such resources are often key to helping smaller ports with fewer resources to participate and to avoid everyone from having to reinvent a wheel.

The program further advances environmental excellence by providing the latest information about emerging technologies. Green Marine invites enterprises with innovative products and services to become partners. Each partner’s speciality is listed in an online directory.

A number of partners also explain their offerings at one of the booths set up at Green Marine’s annual conferences. Fingers crossed: GreenTech 2021 is planned for Seattle, Washington. The conference is regularly moved between the West and East coasts to make it easier for different people to attend. Unfortunately, this year’s conference set for Montreal was cancelled because of COVID-19, but the good news is that an online format is readily accessible

without cost and features a number of key port discussions by industry and academic experts.

From its outset, Green Marine has also prioritized regional concerns, starting with invasive species in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence waterways. More recently, underwater noise was identified as a top priority by the West Coast Advisory Committee. Green Marine set out to clarify the issue by first working with Transport Canada to survey the globally documented research about the impacts on marine life.

In January 2017, Green Marine expanded the program to add performance indicators to deal with underwater noise from port activities and ship operations respectively. Green Marine’s participants have been at the global forefront of this issue by voluntarily undertaking to find and implement solutions to minimize impacts on endangered whales and other marine life.

Two years of research, discussions and awareness-building went into developing the criteria that applies to saltwater ports. A number of relevant Green Marine supporters informed these discussions. Already, this performance indicator has made a difference with ports taking steps to minimize the noise impacts caused by shoreline operations, construction or repairs.

Community relations

Achieving consensus on new indicator or criteria is no easy feat. It requires finding the common denominator among participants that vary significantly in location, size, operations, management and resources. It takes a lot of information sharing and discussion — all of which is done voluntarily by the membership. However, the result is a true ownership of the program by its participants and a real commitment to year-over-year measurable improvement regarding newly encompassed issues.

You would think that participants would shy away from new challenges with everything that’s involved, but the opposite is true. Green Marine has steadily broadened its scope while heightening existing requirements. Some of this stems from the membership desiring to address key issues that become clearer in the course of gaining more experience as sustainability managers and environmental stewards.

For instance, Green Marine’s ports called for a new indicator focusing exclusively on community relations that will become part of Green Marine’s 2021 program. Realizing the importance of social license, our port membership has become keenly aware there are steps they can take to improve their communications with their adjacent communities to increase the chances of a harmonious co-existence. This has also come about through the sharing of innovative projects, such as bicycle paths or birdhouses on port territory, but also the real pitfalls of failing to engage the community in a port’s evolution.

The new criteria establishes an effective framework for a port to communicate with its neighbours in ways that not only avoid unnecessary conflicts but can lead to a port being regarded as an important member of the society, as an essential and increasingly sustainable economic force. Too often in the past, a port would do good things that would go unnoticed or would be misinterpreted. The new indicator aims to improve community dialogue and interaction.

Other upcoming changes involving ports include spill prevention, stormwater management, and aquatic ecosystems. A number of members have already shown true leadership in each of these realms and they are readily sharing their initiatives with others. One of the most treasured aspects emerging from Green Marine is the willingness to set aside usual competitive tendencies in favour of a new culture that readily shares information and expertise when it comes to the environment so the industry as a whole improves.

Green Marine’s certification, which has to be re-earned by every participant annually by filing a new detailed report on the year’s sustainability efforts, is a way for participants to assess progress in key areas and effectively communicate the efforts being voluntarily made to go above and beyond existing regulations.

All of this will become all the more imperative as we shift into the postCOVID economy with revitalized world trade but also with newly heightened societal expectations for Nature’s preservation and presence. None of this will be simple, but Green Marine offers port managers a framework to identify emerging issues, research impacts and possible solutions, and then set challenging but still feasible goals for environmental improvement.

As executive director, David Bolduc is responsible for overseeing the administration, programs and strategic planning of the Green Marine organization. He leads a team of five employees based in Quebec City, Halifax and Seattle. Reporting directly to the Board of Directors, he is Green Marine’s leading representative and outreach agent. His appointment as Green Marine’s executive director in January 2010 followed his active participation in creating the environmental certification program while employed at the St. Lawrence Economic Development Council (SODES), a founding member association.