The X-Press Pearl disaster underscores gross neglect in the environmental management of shipping: Review of future data needs

Abstract

The X-Press Pearl disaster has the unfortunate hallmarks of other global container ship disasters that are becoming increasingly common and will continue to cause future environmental damage. Port container throughput is ~830 million twenty-foot equivalents (TEUs), projected to grow for the next four decades at minimum, and industry experts predict that ship sizes will continue to grow to 50,000 TEU. Misdeclared content, poor packing, inadequate stowage/lashing, ship-board fires, climate-change-driven intensity of storms, and increasing ship size all ensure increasing environmental damage from container ship maritime disasters. Industry consensus is that the number of containers lost at sea is conspicuously undercounted, and the impact of lost containers is unstudied. This paper reviews specific aspects of the container ship industry that contribute to environmental damage, and then addresses needs for risk, impact assessment and environmental management as pertains to industry operations and container ship disasters such as the X-Press Pearl.