The Environment in Shipping Incidents: Salvage Contracts and the Public Interest

Demands for environmental services in the context of property salvage operations have seen environmental clauses being added to standard form salvage contracts. This chapter examines these standard form salvage contracts against the backdrop of sustainable development and whether they provide an appropriate balance between environmental protection and commercial outcomes in the narrow (the interests of salvors and property owners) and wider sense, i.e. the promotion of shipping and marine commerce in general. Salvors want to get paid for their services while property owners have an interest in their property being saved and the minimisation of potential liability. States, representing the public interest and the environment as stakeholders, want their coastlines protected while also having an interest in efficient property salvage operations. As such, modern salvage operations involve at least two of the three recognised interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development (economic development, social development and environmental protection). The chapter illustrates the challenges faced by salvors in commercial salvage operations as the ones tasked with the furthering of potentially divergent interests (environmental and commercial) and explores the linkages between salvage operations and sustainable development. It examines environmental provisions in the LOF and SCOPIC demonstrating that while these contracts provide a de facto furthering of environmental outcomes, this is incidental to the commercial interests of the contracting parties. These contracts provide no direct basis to promote the environmental protection interests of third party stakeholders. The chapter argues that the use of the stipulatio alteri could provide such a direct legal basis to address external stakeholders’ interests in environmental protection while ensuring an integrated and sustainable balancing with economic endeavour.