The science and politics of ecological risk: bioinvasions policies in the US and Australia

Abstract

The US and Australia – western democracies with similar histories of public awareness on environmental issues and broadly comparable records of policy and regulatory action to safeguard environmental quality – have responded differently to one of the newest and most significant threats to marine bioidiversity: that of biological invasions mediated by the ballast water of commercial shipping. Each country has framed the same invasion risks differently for the purposes of policy and regulation: Australia has decided to use a more narrowly circumscribed, target-species-based approach whereas US policy and regulation takes a more comprehensive and precautionary approach. These somewhat surprising national regulatory choices are traced to differences in the structure of each country's process for ballast policy decision making and most importantly to the policy role of ecological expertise within this process.

Keywords:

• comparative policy
• risk regulation
• science-policy dynamics
• ballast water
• marine bioinvasions

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program, and the National Science Foundation, for financial support of this research.

Notes

1. Also referred to as non-native, nonindigenous, exotic and alien species.

2. The Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act of 1990, Pub. Law 101-646 (16 USC 4701 et seq.).

3. National Invasive Species Act of 1996, Pub. Law 104–332 (16 USC 4701 et seq.).

4. NISA 1996 was passed during the ‘Contract with America’ ideological hold on Congress.

5. Data from documents distributed at the 1st meeting of IABWMAC (Interim Australian Ballast Water Management Advisory Council), Hobart, 21 February 1995.

6. Some of the informants for this research have even characterised ABWMAC and the ballast policy process it led as involving a greater than usual degree of consultation and collaboration between government and shipping industry as the regulated community.

7. As well as the largely overlooked potential to cause new invasions by translocating US or Australian species to US or Australian coastal locations beyond the species historic ranges.

8. The challenges of managing coastal ballast – by either exchange or treatment (when on-board ballast treatment technologies become more widely available) are largely associated with the prevailing nature of coastal voyages, which are often shorter in length and duration, and routed in near-coastal waters. Completing an open-ocean ballast exchange, for example, may call for a coastal voyage vessel to deviate from its normal route in order to go into open-ocean water, and may entail voyage delays beyond those associated with the detour, since exchanging large volumes of ballast may take up to several days. With speed and timeliness of delivery amongst the most critical competitive pressures on contemporary shipping, and with contemporary vessels costing tens of thousands of dollars per day to operate, voyage delays can be especially costly.

9. Open ocean ballast exchange can, for example, be unsafe and/or impossible to perform under rough weather conditions at sea.