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Non peer reviewe

How can stakeholders promote environmental and social responsibility in the shipping industry?

The highly globalized and competitive nature of the shipping industry poses serious governance challenges. Recently, the use of voluntary measures, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, has been explored in terms of moving towards environmentally and socially responsible as well as safe shipping industry practices. Limited attention has been paid on the role of stakeholders such as consumers, employees, NGOs, and academia in pressuring the shipping industry towards greater environmental and social responsibility. Here, by applying stakeholder theory and drawing on examples of already materialized stakeholder actions and multistakeholder initiatives, we study the potential ways that stakeholders can promote CSR in the shipping industry: we explore the resource dependencies between stakeholders, the stakeholder influence strategies, and the importance of multi-stakeholder pressure. We show that stakeholders can gain more power by using indirect strategies such as working via and/or in alliances with NGOs, trade unions, banks and financers, and/or different national or international regulatory bodies, as well as with the industry itself. Our results reveal the potential of multi-stakeholder pressure and action to promote the adoption of CSR activities, support the transparency, legitimacy, and enforcement of the practices, as well as widen the scope and focus of CSR initiatives and practices by focusing on a broad range of social and environmental issues. Finally, stakeholder pressure can push towards improved regulations. The study suggests that increased attention needs to be paid on the multi-stakeholder demands, especially considering the accentuated importance of effective maritime governance in the future.Peer reviewe

A proactive approach for maritime safety policy making for the Gulf of Finland : seeking best practices

A rapid increase in maritime traffic together with challenging navigation conditions and a vulnerable ecosystem has evoked calls for improving maritime safety in the Gulf of Finland, (the Baltic Sea). It is suggested that these improvements will be the result of adopting a regionally effective proactive approach to safety policy formulation and management. A proactive approach is grounded on a formal process of identifying, assessing and evaluating accident risks, and adjusting policies or management practices before accidents happen. Currently, maritime safety is globally regulated by internationally agreed prescriptive rules, which are usually revised in reaction to accidents. The proactive Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) is applied to risks common to a ship type or to a particular hazard, when deemed necessary, whereas regional FSA applications are rare. An extensive literature review was conducted in order to examine the opportunities for developing a framework for the GoF for handling regional risks at regional level. Best practices were sought from nuclear safety management and fisheries management, and from a particular case related to maritime risk management. A regional approach that sees maritime safety as a holistic system, and manages it by combining a scientific risk assessment with stakeholder input to identify risks and risk control options, and to evaluate risks is proposed. A regional risk governance framework can improve safety by focusing on actual regional risks, designing tailor-made safety measures to control them, enhancing a positive safety culture in the shipping industry, and by increasing trust among all involved.Peer reviewe

Best practices to improve maritime safety in the Gulf of Finland : a risk governance approach

The Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea is a vulnerable sea area with high volumes of maritime traffic and difficult navigation conditions. The reactive international rules are not anymore regarded adequate in ensuring safety in this sea area. In this paper, a regional proactive risk governance approach is suggested for improving the effectiveness of safety policy formulation and management in the Gulf of Finland, based on the risk governance framework developed by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), the Formal Safety Assessment approach adopted by the International Maritime Safety Organisation (IMO), and best practices sought from other sectors and sea areas. The approach is based on a formal process of identifying, assessing and evaluating accident risks at the regional level, and adjusting policies or management practices before accidents occur. The proposed approach sees maritime safety as a holistic system, and manages it by combining a scientific risk assessment with stakeholder input to identify risks and risk control options, and to evaluate risks. A regional proactive approach can improve safety by focusing on actual risks, by designing tailor-made safety measures to control them, by enhancing a positive safety culture in the shipping industry, and by increasing trust among all involved.Non peer reviewe

Temporal patterns of phytoplankton phenology across high latitude lakes unveiled by long-term time series of satellite data

Monitoring temporal changes in phytoplankton dynamics in high latitude lakes is particularly timely for understanding the impacts of warming on aquatic ecosystems. In this study, we analyzed 33-years of high resolution (30 m) Landsat (LT) data for reconstructing seasonal patterns of chlorophyll a (chl a) concentration in four lakes across Finland, between 60°N and 64°N. Chl a models based on LT spectral bands were calibrated using 17-years (2000–2016) of field measurements collected across the four lakes. These models were then applied for estimating chl a using the entire LT-5 and 7 archives. Approximately 630 images, from 1984 to 2017, were analyzed for each lake. The chl a seasonal patterns were characterized using phenology metrics, and the time-series of LT-based chl a estimates were used for identifying temporal shifts in the seasonal patterns of chl a concentration. Our results showed an increase in the length of phytoplankton growth season in three of the lakes. The highest increase was observed in Lake Köyliönjärvi, where the length of growth season has increased by 28 days from the baseline period of 1984–1994 to 2007–2017. The increase in the length of season was mainly attributed to an earlier start of phytoplankton blooms. We further analyzed surface temperature (Ts) and precipitation data to verify if climatic factors could explain the shifts in the seasonal patterns of chl a. We found no direct relationship between Ts and chl a seasonal patterns. Similarly, the phenological metrics of Ts, in particular length of season, did not show significant temporal trends. On the other hand, we identify potential links between changes in precipitation patterns and the increase in the phytoplankton season length. We verified a significant increase in the rainfall contribution to the total precipitation during the autumn and winter, accompanied by a decline in snowfall volumes. This could indicate an increasing runoff volume during the beginning of spring, contributing to an earlier onset of the phytoplankton blooms, although further assessments are needed to analyze historical streamflow values and nearby land cover data. Likewise, additional studies are needed to better understand why chl a patterns in some lakes seem to be more resilient than in others.peerReviewe

A Bayesian model of fisheries discards with flexible structure and priors defined by experts

Peer reviewe

Statistical and modelling methods for assessing the relationships between ecological and chemical status in lakes. REBECCA Deliverable 12

This report is deliverable no. 12 of the EU FP 6 project REBECCA (Relationships between ecological and chemical status of surface waters). It describes the statistical approaches and modelling methods used within Workpackage 3 (Lakes). An important purpose of the project has been to develop indicators for ecological status, and to de-scribe and quantify the relationships between chemical pressure gradients and the biological indica-tors. Within Workpackage 3 (Lakes) we have developed indicators and analysed relationships for four main taxonomic groups: phytoplankton, macrophytes, macroinvertebrates and fish. This report describes the statistical methods used for both indicator development and relationships analyses, divided into three types of approaches. (1) Univariate methods: mainly used for describing relationships, after the response variable has been developed. (2) Multivariate methods: mainly used for data exploration and for deriving univariate response variables from multivariate community data. (3) Bayesian methods: particularly useful for analysing complex ecological systems, because hierarchical models and network models can be more easily constructed and analysed within a Bayesian framework.European Commission

Bayesian networks in environmental and resource management

This overview article for the special series “Bayesian Networks in Environmental and Resource Management” reviews 7 case study articles with the aim to compare Bayesian network (BN) applications to different environmental and resource management problems from around the world. The article discusses advances in the last decade in the use of BNs as applied to environmental and resource management. We highlight progress in computational methods, best-practices for model design and model communication. We review several research challenges to the use of BNs in environmental and resource management that we think may find a solution in the near future with further research attention