Cooperation Between Higher Educational Institutions of Baltic States to Promote Environmental

I. Kostylev 21-22.10.09

V. Mikheev

Cooperation between higher educational institutions of Baltic States to promote environmental safety of shipping

First of all, we would like to express our profound gratitude to those who have organized this Seminar, i.e. to the Head Office of Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, for the opportunity of addressing this high forum, which was granted to us. It is a tradition already for our Academy to report to the Seminar participants on the manning of the fleet in the frame of the main issue being discussed. We are entitled, as it seems, to speak not only on behalf of a particular higher educational institution, but on behalf of the educational community of Russia’s water transport as well. This power has been delegated to us by the Ministry of Education within the framework of the Education and MethodicAssociation which has been working for more than 30 years already on the basis of the AdmiralMakarovStateMaritimeAcademy and which unites methodologically more than 20 higher educational institutions of the sea, river, fishing fleet and the Navy.

Professional training coordination along the lines of environmental safety for the transport industry is of great importance, especially for the water transport. Indeed, if the fleet is to be contemplated as a potential source of environment pollution, everything is to be borne in mind – water, air and even the coastal areas.

It goes without saying that the training plans and programs contain an ecological component, and not only for the prospective crew members, but for graduates of shore-based specializations as well. It should be noted, however, that for a higher educational institution the basic document as regards the volume and contents of the educational process is the federal standard, whereas for the fleet this is to be supplemented by the requirements of international conventions which take a certain time to be developed and are valid for a particular period of time. Duringthetimeoftheirimplementation, relevantamendmentsareintroduced. It is at this stage that a procedure for the interaction with related educational institutions, supervision bodies and ordinary practitioners, i.e. enterprises and organizations of the maritime industry, is necessary.

Before wedwell in more detail upon issues regarding our participation in solving the problems of the Baltic protection, as stipulated by the program, we deem it appropriatetoinform the esteemedparticipants to the Seminar about the connections of educational institutions on a global scale. There are several international institutions of maritime higher school interaction in existence and, bearing in mind a very high representation level of the Seminar and the fact that the participants are well informed, we will dwell upon one event only. During 19 to 21 September, the 10-th Anniversary Assembly of the International Association of Maritime Universities (IAMU) was held on the basis of the AdmiralMakarovStateMaritimeAcademy. Our Academy was the first higher school in Russia, which started working with this Association uniting only 8 higher schools 10 years ago, and now there are more than 50 of them.

The previous Assembly was attended by 150 representatives from 32 countries. Rectors from Russia, Ukraine, USA, Great Britain, Canada, Japan, China, Poland and other countries discussed the current situation of training professionals for the fleet. Bearing in mind the amendments to MARPOL and SOLAS conventions, the ecological issues were not left aside, either.

For a long time, when discussing the problems of environmental pollution prevention during academic activity, we have been placing a greater emphasis on eventual pollution sources in the form of water discharge overboard and waste removal from the ship. So was the fleet, and the main cargo traffic was not countered among goods dangerous in this respect. The accident situations that occurred were mainly limited to relatively small water areas.

With the growth in the volume of hydrocarbons transported by sea, a natural demand arose for a closer attention to the environment protection and oil spill prevention both during cargo-handling operations and in accident situations involving hull damage. Our task was to broaden the seafarers’ knowledge both in the prevention and response to eventual spills.

All educational institutions introduced relevant sections and even special courses to their programs. Regrettably, one should confess those were often not proactive steps, but a response to some ship incidents or another. There is no need to mention dates and ship names as examples of casualties. They were often mentioned on many occasions including the seminars on substandard shipping.

As to the present-day shipping, the mainline directions of oil and oil productstraffichave been formed, the cargo-handling technique is developed, but the problem of human factor still remains. All the educational institutions of the water transport own special training centres and have long introduced additional courses for seafarers to study the specific features of work on board tankers, chemical tankers and gas carriers into their practice.

Bearing in mind the time allotted for our report, we are not going to expand on these very important educational programs of a particular higher school. We have about 100 similar programs at our Academy and they are all actively used.

In our opinion, it is more important to share some experience and to inform the esteemedparticipants to the Seminar about joint work with the educational institutions and maritime administrations of the Baltic States.

With the growing volume of oil product transshipment in the ports, mainly in Russia and Finland, the Baltic has become a potentially vulnerable area, and its protection, cleanliness of water and shore area will in many respects depend on the graduates of educational institutions of the water transport, as we think. It is they who ensure cargo-handling operations at the terminals, who stand on the bridges of huge ships carryingcrude oil and petroleum products.

We have been deeply involved in training experts in this direction since 1994 when a special training centre was founded. Besides shipboard personnel training, additional training of oil terminal experts was started on issues related to oil product transshipment and marine environment protection. Initially, these training courses were only organized in the territory of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region.

However, with expanding the activities in the port of Primorsk, an interest for cooperation was demonstrated by our Finnish colleagues, among others, KotkaCity administration (its vice-mayor Mr. Pertti Lintunen).

Cooperation with experts from Kotka Institute of Additional Professional Education (now the University of Applied Sciences in Kotka) enabled us to establish these courses as international ones. While taking the courses, the students now have an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the operation of oil terminals, marine rescue coordination centers and environmental protection enterprisesof Finland.

Representatives of oil companies and terminals from many areas of Russia have taken part in the realization of the program.

There is no need for additional arguments in favour of the importance of ecological cleanness of the Baltic for other countries as well.

Further development of this program manifested itself in the cooperation with the Swedish Maritime Administration, Swedish Coast Guard and Swedish Rescue Services Agency. Owing to this cooperation, 20 seminars and training courses were organized in St Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Kaliningrad, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Karlskron. More than 300 persons have taken part in those educational programs.

Implementation of educational programs in the field of environmental safety had then become a matter of serious attention on the governmental level of the Baltic States.

Accordingly, the most intensive development of this activity began after the publication of the RF MinTrans Directive VR – 28-rof 23.03.02 concerning the establishment of a system for training, retraining and advanced training of emergency responders to the oil and HNS spills at sea. On the basis of this Directive, a training centre for crisis management analysis was established. Owing to the use of the specific up-to-date training equipment of the centre, the training of oil spill respondersand salvers was oriented to practical training and to the development of management skills for oil spill response operations. After having studied the experience and technological base of the Academy, the experts of the Kotka Institute for Additional Professional Education (Jorma Laakso) suggested the idea of establishing anti-crisis centres to cover the whole Gulf of Finland. To realize this idea, joint projects were organized with colleagues from the EstonianMaritimeAcademy and the Kotka Institute of Additional Professional Education. In realization of the projects, practically equivalent systems of anti-crisis centres were established in Tallinn, Коtka and St. Petersburg.

Through the high-speed Internet channels, the centres were integrated in a network and connected to the multipoint videoconferencing system. Theobjectiveofsuchaunionwastoharmonizethesystemfortrainingoil spill respondersfromthreecountries. For a first time, on-line training system was implemented when the experts from three countries finding themselves in three remote centres can work, on a real time scale, with the same oil spill scenario and work out a unified spill response strategy in the videoconferencing regime. This system passed the evaluation test and proved its viabilityand efficiency for training. The system generated on the basis of anti-crisis centres may be built up by adding new participants to the network. The experts of the Maritime University of Szczecin have shown an interest in the project. Expanding the anti-crisis centre network will make it possible to cover the whole Baltic Seaarea, which will serve as a technological basis for the development and harmonization of approaches in training andprocessing typical scenarios of responding not only to oil spills, but to other accident situations at sea as well.

Dear participants to the Seminar,

Bearing in mind that representatives of maritime administrations from many countries are gathered here, we deem it advisable to return to the Assembly of IAMU which took place at the AdmiralMakarovStateMaritimeAcademy.

For the first time in the IAUM history, a ROUND TABLE was conducted within the framework of the rectors’ and presidents’ forum involving the representatives of shipping companies and a number of maritime administrations. The Saint Petersburg Statement was adopted, which describes the main trends of joint activities in maritime personnel training.

The participants of the Round Table came to a conclusion that globalization processes developing in the world as a whole and in shipping particularly pose the tasks of developing unified standards of maritime education, which would be higher than those adopted by the STCW Convention, 1978 and STCW Code. This activity is fully in line with the IMO concept now engaged in the revision of the Convention and having announced the ‘Go to Sea Campaign’ for young people in 2009.

As can be seen from the above, the role of educational institutions is very prominent, but we can work more efficiently in cooperation with business structures and government agencies only. Agreements and memoranda of understanding that are concluded should be working instruments and not a rhetoric exercise. Only joint work may bring success.

Thank you.