Do eco-rating schemes improve the environmental performance of ships?

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The Transformation of Swedish Shipping, 1970-2010

Since the early 1970s, as shipping has undergone a period of structural change, Swedish shipping has rapidly declined from a position of global importance. The Swedish-controlled fleet has dwindled, and the structure of the industry itself has changed. This article explores the influence of shipping markets, shipping regulations, company strategies, maritime know-how, and financial resources on the development of Swedish shipping from 1970 to 2010. A comparison is made between, on the one hand, the direction taken by two failing companies and, on the other, the courses followed by two companies that managed to grow despite difficult conditions. On a broader level, the article traces the development of expertise in a declining industry

The Potential and Limits of Environmental Disclosure Regulation: A Global Value Chain Perspective Applied to Tanker Shipping

Exploring how transnational environmental governance and the operation of global value chains (GVCs) intersect is key in explaining the circumstances under which mandatory disclosure can improve the environmental footprint of business operations. We investigate how the governance dynamics of the tanker shipping value chain (a major emitter of greenhouse gases) limits the effectiveness of the European Union (EU) monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) regulation, which mandates the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions for ships calling at EU ports. Although MRV seeks to help shipowners and ship managers save fuel and reduce emissions, it does not address the complexity of power relationsalong the tanker shipping value chain and currently cannot disentangle how different actors influence the design, operational, commercial, and ocean/weather factors that together determine fuel consumption. In particular, the EU MRV neglects to reflect on how oil majors exert their power and impose their commercial priorities on other actors, and thus co-determine fuel use levels. We conclude that, in its current form, the EU MRV is unlikely to lead to significant environmental upgrading in tanker shipping. More generally,we argue that regulators seeking to facilitate environmental upgrading need to expand their focus beyond the unwanted behaviors of producers of goods and providers of services to also address the incentive structures and demands placed on them by global buyers.<br/