Abstract
In general, seaports are located in urban areas or in their environs, whereby their activity has a very direct effect on the population. Therefore, reducing environmental contamination and improving air quality are priority management goals for port authorities (PAs). In Spain, the state-owned seaport system consists of 28 PAs that manage 46 ports. Its regulation received a major impulse through the enactment of the Spanish Ports Law in 2010. The law establishes especially the obligation that, annually, the PA prepare a sustainability report with 111 sustainability indicators. This study is founded on a database that was created with information from the reports from 2011 to 2016. A statistical analysis studies the evolution of the implementation of 20 measures for the reduction of atmospheric contamination in Spanish ports and identify the strategic lines carried out by the PAs and the measures adopted depending on the size of the ports.
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Notes
See document COM 616 (2007).
The new methodology is based on the development of 111 indicators found in the four dimensions of sustainability. In this regard, the proposal represents the inclusion of 60 indicators more than the previous one, based on the more corporate prescriptions of the GRI.
This Act introduces quite novel aspects in environmental management, as is the case of the demand for means to prevent and reduce marine, atmospheric and land contamination in all manner of facilities that are located in ports (Art. 62.2), a strict sanctioning system (Art. 306.1.a) and the rescue of the concession in the event of environmentally harmful actions (Art 99).
By processing the basic data used to create Fig. 1, we get a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.988 (p = 0.000) for the evolution of operational or technical and administrative measures, of 0.986 (p = 0.000) for operational or technical and specific technical measures and of 0.965 (p = 0.003) for administrative and specific technical measures. All of the significance levels (p) are lower than 0.05.
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In addition to the editor, the authors wish to appreciate the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and their gratitude to Puertos del Estado for providing them with the data and necessary information to carry out this study.
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Bermúdez, F.M., Laxe, F.G. & Aguayo-Lorenzo, E. Assessment of the tools to monitor air pollution in the Spanish ports system. Air Qual Atmos Health 12, 651–659 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-019-00684-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-019-00684-x