Oil spills attract the public attention and generate concern, but biological discharges pose a greater threat in the long term and are not as publicised.
An exotic fungus wiped out billions of American chestnuts in the early twentieth century, dramatically altering the landscape and ecosystem.
But perhaps the biggest biological discharge of all time occurred when a eukaryote microorganism which is similar to a fungus, the Phytophthora infestans -a name that comes from Greek and means plant destroyer - set sail from America to Belgium. A few months later, when it arrived in Ireland it unleashed a pest that affected potatoes, caused a deadly famine, and mass migration of the population.
These aren't the only cases. Which is why the countries of the world got together more than six decades ago to approve the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) to help stop the spread of pests and plant diseases via international trade and cross border transactions and to protect farmers, foresters, biodiversity, the environment, and consumers.
"The crop losses and the costs generated to combat exotic pests are a heavy economic burden on the production of food, fibre, and fodder," says Craig Fedchock, coordinator of the IPPC Secretariat at FAO. "Overall, fruit flies, beetles, fungi, and related pests reduce global crop yields by between 20 and 40 percent," he said.
Trade is the vector for pests - containers, their vehicle
Invasive species reach new habitats in various ways, but the main way is through maritime transportation.
Currently, this type of transport involves the use of containers. Worldwide, there are about 527 million maritime container movements per year: China alone moves more than 133 million containers a year. Not only can the goods act as a vector for the spread of exotic species that are capable of causing ecological and agricultural damage, but the steel components of the containers themselves can be a vector for the pests.
For example, an analysis of 116,701 empty shipping containers that arrived in New Zealand during the past five years, revealed that one in ten was contaminated externally, i.e. twice the rate of the contamination there is inside the containers. Some of the pests found included the gypsy moth, the giant African snail, Argentine ants, and brown stink bug marbling. All of these threaten crops, forests, and urban environments. Meanwhile, soil residues may contain seeds of invasive plants, nematodes, and plant pathogens.
Designing a phytosanitary action plan
Last year the Commission on Phytosanitary Measures adopted a recommendation to encourage national plant protection organizations to recognize and communicate the risks associated with shipping containers and to contribute to the implementation of relevant sections of the packing of cargo units transportation code of practice of the United Nations (CTU), a non regulatory set of guidelines for the industry.
This would allow stakeholders to implement a system to address these threats, without harming the cogs and wheels of commerce, by using automated cranes that are currently capable of loading and downloading containers in 20 seconds in a medium-sized port, such as the port of Hamburg, which moves a quarter of the volume of the port of Shanghai.
Even though this would slow down port operations, it seems that there is unanimity on the significance of the risks and the need to take action. For the time being, the Commission will wait while stakeholders apply initial voluntary measures and there is a more widespread use of best practices or a more diligent application of existing procedures, and, depending on the success of these measures, the Commission will reconsider the possible development of an international standard in the future.
Source: agronewscastillayleon.com