ANNEX4
QUESTIONNAIRE ON BALLAST WATER MANAGEMENT
Introduction
1 In 1991 the Marine Environment Protection
Committee (MEPC) of the Intemational Maritime Organization
(IMO) adopted Guidelines for Preventing the Introduction of
Unwanted Organisms and Pathogens from Ships' Ballast Water
and Sediment Discharges.
2 In 1992, the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) requested IMO to consider
the adoption of appropriate, i.e., legally binding, rules on
ballast water discharge to prevent the spread of
non-indigenous organisms. The eighteenth IMO Assembly in
1993, noting that the above MEPC Guidelines had been used
only by a very few countries, and that the uncontrolled
discharge of ballast water containing aquatic organisms
remained a major intenational problem which has continuously
worsened, adopted the MEPC Guidelines through Assembly
resolution A.774(18), thus emphasizing the importance of this
matter. The resolution requested the Marine Environment
Protection Committee (MEPC) and the Maritime Safety
Committee (MSC) to keep the guidelines set out in the
resolution under review“with a view to further developing
the guidelines as a basis for a new Annex to MARPOL 73/78”,
i.e., to develop internationally applicable legally binding
provisions as part of the MARPOL 73/78 Convention.
3 In 1994 MEPC started to prepare legally
binding provisions together with guidelines that should
advise IMO Member States on the effective implementation of
the regulations. In addition, MEPC prepared the text of a new
Assembly resolution on Guidelines for the Control and
Management of Ships' Ballast Water to Minimize the Transfer
of Harmfull Aquatic Organisms and Pathogens, which was
adopted by the IMO Assembly at its twentieth session in 1997
as resolution A.868(20). In carrying out the above work, MEPC
nated that in a number of countries unilateral action had
been taken by individual IMO Member States in the form of
requirements adopted with a view to minimizing the risks of
introducing aquatic organisms and pathogens with ballast
water and associated sediments discharged from ships.
4 In light of the above situation, IMO is
increasingly being requested to provide information on
requirements concerning ballast water control practices
developed by individual countries or port authorities. It is
the purpose of this questionnaire to collect such
information, to have this evaluated by MEPC and to distribute
the results of such an evaluation to all Member States.
