Achim Steiner News

The United Nations said on Friday it had completed the removal of more than 1 million barrels of oil from a decaying supertanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast, averting a potential environmental disaster.U.N. officials and activists have been warning for years that the entire Red Sea coastline was at risk, as the rusting Safer tanker could have ruptured or exploded, spilling four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.The war in Yemen caused the suspension of maintenance operations on the Safer in 2015.

Dutch marine services firm Boskalis has, through its subsidiary SMIT Salvage, reached an agreement with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to remove the oil from the decaying FSO Safer moored off Yemen’s Red Sea coast in a push to avoid environmental disaster. This project is a part of the UN-coordinated operation to remove and transfer more than one million barrels of oil from the decaying tanker into a safe modern tanker and the responsible disposal of the Safer.

The United Nations has purchased a large tanker to store about 1.1 million barrels of oil that will be transferred from a decaying vessel off Yemen's coast in a bid to avert an environmental disaster, officials said on Thursday.U.N. officials have been warning for several years that the Red Sea and the coastline of Yemen was at risk as the Safer tanker could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.But the top U.N. official in Yemen, David Gressly…

Climate change is aiding shipping, fisheries and tourism in the Arctic but the economic gains fall short of a "cold rush" for an icy region where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the world average. A first cruise ship will travel the icy Northwest Passage north of Canada in 2016, Iceland has unilaterally set itself mackerel quotas as stocks shift north and Greenland is experimenting with crops such as tomatoes. Yet businesses, including oil and gas companies or mining firms looking north, face risks including that permafrost will thaw and ruin ice roads, buildings and pipelines.

"Frightening" prospect of rising seas - U.N.; Islands say overlooked, fault inaction over climate. Small island states facing a "frightening" rise in sea levels will seek investments in everything fron solar energy to fisheries to boost their economies at a U.N. summit next week. Leaders will meet in Samoa in the Pacific from Sept. 1-4 to drum up partnerships with companies, development banks and donors on projects that bring in dollars and jobs while protecting oceans and environments, organisers said. Many islands from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean are suffering erosion and coastal flooding from storm surges as global warming raises sea levels by melting ice from the Himalayas to Greenland.

An IMO symposium on a Sustainable Maritime Transportation System, held on world Maritime Day (September 26, 2013), provided an opportunity for a discussion on a global agenda for a sustainable maritime transportation system. The symposium reflected the world Maritime Day theme: “Sustainable Development: IMO's contribution beyond Rio+20”. IMO Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu told the symposium that shipping, and port industries were vital links in the global supply chain, the complex mechanism without which today’s inter-dependent, global economy would be simply unable to function.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is to collaborate in efforts to mount a coordinated response from UN agencies and other concerned parties, including regional Governments, to the oil spill currently affecting the coastal and marine environments of Lebanon and Syria. The spill, estimated to be one of the largest ever to affect the Mediterranean, follows an incident in mid-July in which an oil storage unit at a power plant in Jiyyeh, 30 km south of Beirut, sustained bombing damage during the current conflict. Theme: --Select Story Tmeme-- Anchor Handling Tugs Articulated Tug Barge (ATB) Ballast Water Management Barges Bulk…