Warship Environment Protection: Avoiding utopian aspiration in favour of rational, balanced, objective pursuit

Compliance with marine environment protection obligations can be exceptionally onerous for warships, and in many cases nonsensical to pursue and impossible to achieve. Compliance is becoming ever more divergent from the standard caveat of “not impairing the operations or operational capabilities of such ships”. Some requirements can be accommodated, offering benefits in terms of operational effectiveness and sustainment. Many, however, cannot be sensibly addressed without severe penalty in combat capability, survivability and through-life costs. Strict application of merchant ship risk remedies to warships can result in inappropriate design responses to ill-defined, inconsequential or non-existent risks, and myopic adherence to IMO prescripts can sometimes result in perverse outcomes which actually amplify risks to the environment. Navies need to be smarter in characterising and managing environmental risks, and innovative in generating fit-for-purpose technical solutions.

Speaker Bio:

John Polglaze (FRINA  FIMarEST  MEIANZ  CMarSci), the Director of PGM Environment, has over 25 years’ experience as a maritime environmental consultant. This follows a 19 year full-time Naval career with service in submarines and surface ships, and he maintains his Commission as a Captain in the Australian Naval Reserve. As well as work for the IMO, other maritime regulators and commercial ports and shipping, he has worked in warship environmental compliance for over 30 years. He has contributed to a notable proportion of current Australian navy environmental management policies and procedures and related engineering policy, and his warship acquisition experience spans an array of capabilities, including patrol vessels, combat support ships, small and large amphibious platforms, frigates and destroyers, as well as nuclear powered and conventional submarines.