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GREEN MARINE
GREEN MARINE Green Marine expands its horizons with new performance indicators
By Véronique Trudeau
Green Marine Program Manager
Green Marine has significantly expanded its scope from the six environmental issues originally prioritized in 2008. The environmental certification program currently has 14 performance indicators with two more in the works.
Ports are being challenged to embrace new social responsibilities and to broaden their environmental efforts with new performance indicators added to the landside program in 2021, as well as to broaden their environmental efforts with the upcoming Aquatic Ecosystems performance indicator.
As with all new indicators, the idea for a specific focus on aquatic ecosystems in and around port waters came from the membership. In this case, it was Green Marine’s West Coast Advisory Committee. Green Marine already had an indicator for spill prevention and stormwater management. However, there was no requirement to assess the impacts of port activities on aquatic ecosystems, nor to monitor and improve their health.
By comparison, impacts measurement and the adoption of a management plan are normally required at the program’s Level 3 and 4. They can be found in the Greenhouse Gases performance indicator, as well as for Waste Management. A core aspect of the Green Marine program is understanding what your impact is so that you can then devise an action plan to measurably improve your environmental performance.
New port requirements
The new performance indicator will suggest a series of measures to characterize, assess, monitor and improve the health of aquatic ecosystems. Some of the criteria will involve establishing stations to monitor water quality. Other criteria will outline physical and biological indicators to benchmark and monitor an ecosystem’s health over time.
Qualifying for this indicator’s higher performance levels will require improving aquatic ecosystems, by restoring or improving existing aquatic life conditions or by establishing new habitat. An ultimate goal is to have real-time monitoring of key parameters that would promptly indicate any negative changes that could rapidly be addressed.
The indicator will also include criteria that involve ports taking steps to prevent pollution from vessels in port waters. It furthermore will call upon ports to reduce the impacts of dredging and to improve sediment quality where that is feasible to do. Another element involves ports taking steps to assess and reduce the risk of spreading aquatic invasive species.
We realize that most ports — except for possibly the largest ones — do not have the specialized equipment, expert staff nor financial resources to do all this. We also don’t want our participants to have to reinvent the wheel. Therefore, one of the first steps in this performance indicator will be to identify and contact potential collaborators or partners to help with benchmarking and subsequent monitoring. It could be that in some cases a governmental agency, a research institute or an NGO is already doing some of this work and can provide the required information or arrange with a port to do so.
Green Marine is in the process of drafting all the Aquatic Ecosystems performance indicator criteria for the program’s four levels beyond the initial stage of monitoring of regulations for presentation to the membership this fall. Once we receive and integrate the feedback from our Advisory Committees and the ports within the program, the indicator will be submitted for board approval and ultimately introduced for voluntary reporting as part of the 2023 self-evaluations.
Reporting on a new indicator is always optional for the first year. This gives participants some time to familiarize themselves with the new requirements and how they can adjust their organization’s activities to achieve each of the program’s four increasingly challenging stages beyond Level 1’s compulsory monitoring of regulations. A trial year also facilitates a testing of the criteria and its related guidelines to ensure that
everything is clear and possible in terms of achievement, self-evaluation and results reporting.
Community relations
A significant proportion of the landside participants voluntarily reported on their 2021 efforts for the newly introduced Community Relations performance indicator. Almost 80 percent of Green Marine’s 50 ports and about half of the 60 participating terminals did so, along with three quarters of the program’s 13 shipyards.
The consensus from our Advisory Committees was that participants would like the program’s five-level criteria structure to specifically gauge their community relations efforts. As a result, the criteria related to community relations were removed from the existing Community Impacts performance indicator, which now exclusively deals with nuisances such as noise, light, dust, odour and traffic.
By contrast, the Community Relations performance indicator is now focused on how landside participants communicate and engage with local community stakeholders with interests in waterfront areas for ecological, recreational or other purposes.
A key element for this indicator’s Level 5 achievement hinges on the idea of co-creation. While representatives in the working group were keen to embrace this idea, they said they needed a clear definition of co-creation and some guidelines for achieving it.
Partnering in co-creation
Since co-creation is a relatively new concept to our industry, Green Marine along with the representatives from a few ports completed a training session with a co-creation specialist from L’Atelier Social in the Fall of 2020. The goal was to give all of us a better understanding of the concept. Green Marine also sought the assistance of the Reseau Maritime du Quebec (RQM), which has both funded and been involved in a number of co-creation initiatives related to marine-related activities, but none of them specifically involving maritime transportation. Based on these sessions and others, we came up with some guidelines.
Additional discussions led to RQM offering to fund a project that involved two researchers with co-creation expertise assisting a Quebec port in establishing the steps for such an initiative. The Port of Sept-Îles responded to Green Marine’s call for potential interest. It offered to try the process for the rejuvenation of a multi-use pier that welcomes cruise ships, as well as other vessels, and is accessible to the public for fishing and other recreational activities.
The project now involves the Port of Sept-Îles, Green Marine, RQM, the Centre de développement et de recherche en intelligence numérique (CDRIN), and Le Laboratoire en innovation ouverte (Llio). A laboratory for open innovation, Llio has developed a co-creation process. The approach first welcomes ideas from all frontiers, then fosters a culture of innovation, and subsequently lays out a working framework to collaboratively share knowledge and expertise for the project’s realization.
Co-creation is a lot more elaborate than simply consulting stakeholders on something you already have in mind. It requires inviting various ideas from the outset. The Port of Sept-îles has agreed to go through this process to see what feasible ideas arise to reconceptualize its pier. For instance, there’s always daycare outings to the area so it could be that some playground equipment is installed in the vicinity.
Green Marine is using this project as a case study to test and refine its co-creation guidelines. The information will also serve as an example to other participants of what can be done and how to go about it.
While Green Marine is still very much an environmental certification program, this indicator is reaching more into the realm of social responsibility. It’s something that our participants have indicated they increasingly want to strengthen as one of sustainability’s three pillars, while they continue to improve economic and environmental aspects.
