APICE

Title: Common Mediterranean strategy and local practical Actions for the mitigation of Port, Industries and Cities Emissions

Summary: Harbours - on one hand - represent a significant potential for the economic development of coastal and sub-costal zones but - on the other hand - they often have a stronger environmental impact than a medium sized industrial park & show all major types of pollution sources: ships/cargos, intermodality transports, industries. Beyond the others, emissions from cargos & industrial hinterlands have serious effects on air-quality of ports/urban surroundings (preliminary studies show that about 70% of the particulate matter has an anthropic origin and the impact of the harbours activities could account for 20% - 30%) and this is a key-issue in determining the future development strategies of coast cities.

Given those premises, the presence of competing activities in coastal areas leads to socio-economic, urban, environment potential conflicts that need to be managed by all relevant public authorities (regional / local administrations) & intermediate bodies (port authorities) through meditated policies & effective interventions. This is the challenge tackled by APICE: the object is to address common strategies & local interventions to support the development of the coast management policies through a intersectorial approach that assumes the impact of each air-pollution sources, and related mitigation measures, as driver to curb emissions while allowing durable economic growth & health benefits.

APICE, performed in 5 big port-cities, is organized in 3 main project phases:

(1) air-monitoring campaigns, intercomparison & modelling to quantify the impact of the selected pollutant sources to the air-quality in each territory;

(2) identification of the risk activities + vulnerability benchmarking to design intervention scenarios & shared strategies (in terms of action/results/cost) to mitigate air-pollution effects while preserving economic potentialities of port-cities;

(3) adaptation of the joint strategies at local level to improve the governance capacities in the coastline project areas & promotion of effective interventions to anticipate/facilitate the implementation of EU directives

Main expected results are the update of the regional inventories of air-pollutions and –on this base– the elaboration of 5 comprehensive roadmaps / environmental assessments to support large investments in harbours & in their urban-coastal surroundings. Another key-result is the promotion of voluntary agreements, at local & international level, between policymakers, ports & ship operators towards new ship emission abatement technologies & incentives (i.e. blue flag & tradable emission permits) that can give a coherence in all ports’ strategies with regard to the emissions’ standards of docked ships.

Target groups hit by APICE mainstreaming are government authorities, environmental agencies, urban planners, ports, maritime operators, while the final beneficiaries of results are the coastal communities that will enjoy, in the medium term, the air-pollution mitigation strategies.

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