Maritime transportation: Let's slow down a bit.

Maritime transportation is a major contributor to the world economy, but has significant social and environmental impacts. Each impact calls for different technical or operational solutions. Amongst these solutions, we found that speed reduction measures appear to mitigate several issues: (1) collision with wildlife; (2) collision with non-living objects; (3) underwater noise; (4) invasive species; and (5) gas emission. We do not pretend that speed reduction is the best solution for each individual issue mentioned in this paper, but we argue that it could be a key solution to significantly reduce these threats all together. Further interdisciplinary research is required to balance private economic costs of speed reduction measures with environmental and social benefits emerging from all mitigated issues.

Ports closed to cruise ships in the context of COVID-19: What choices are there for coastal states?

In the COVID-19 context will coastal States open their ports to cruise ships to meet the needs of people in danger? Can they prefer a more self-centered approach to protect their territory and exercise their sovereignty? The purpose of this study is to analyze the legal framework for the management of health risk by coastal States in the context of the coronavirus threat on cruise ships. The lack of a clearly defined common management strategy in face of major health risk complicates the situation. Only cooperation between flag States and port States will make it possible to overcome any conflicts of implementation between the State sovereignty principle and assistance to persons in distress at sea.