WA Communal Project - "Ballast Water Management"

[Bormiar]

The World Assembly Communal Project is a project where we as a staff craft a resolution to then be drafted and critiqued in TRR by our many experienced legislators. The resolution will be submitted via The Rejected Realms World Assembly Info provided there are no legality issues with that. This project is intended to facilitate General Assembly discussion and foster a sense of accomplishment among us, the WA staff.
--- Essentially, ballast water is water stored in a ship without cargo in it. It adds weight that can be discharged easily, and is essential to the stability and operation of the ship. Ballast water unfortunately brings in organisms in one part of the world to be dropped off somewhere else. This carries invasive species and can disrupt the ecosystem. These can include anything from plants to bacteria.



The solution seems to be to exchanging the ballast water at high depth, during the day, as far away from the littoral (area close to shore) as possible: http://www.coastalwiki.org/wiki/Ballast_water.

This video explains how ballast water will be treated per the real life Ballast Water Management Convention. We may have to watch it a few times. This seems to be a modern solution that is not fully implemented yet.

A previous resolution regarding ballast water banned the discharge of ballast water on coastal waters, which put human lives in danger. We should prioritize human life.

It seems are option are to:

1. Force ballast water to be discharged only at specific points as mentioned earlier
2. Require ballast water to be treated as described in the video and give ships time to implement this.

I think we can do a combination of both. Ships must adhere to the policies on discharging ballast water until a treatment system is implemented, which must be implemented within a certain amount of time.
--- Upon researching this, it appears that there is no general invasive species prevention legislation, so we can try that too if we like. I'd like to start small, but would like Morover to confirm that ballast water is enough to legislate on.

Please post here with any comments regarding the draft or the communal project (include suggestions on what can be included in the resolution). You can also talk in #wa-staff.

[Morover]

I think that ballast water is a solid topic to legislate on - kinda niche, but not overly so. My opinion on it is not definitive, of course, but I could see it passing.

Now, this isn't something I am overly knowledgable about, but it's something that I'm willing to help out with - it's regrettable that I've taken so long to getting around to this (so long, in fact, that it ended up Bormiar posted this thread anyways lol), but I've been suffering a distinct lack of motivation in regards to actually researching the subject.

I'm willing to set up a google doc that can be worked on by the various members of the WA staffage over the next week or so, before presenting it to the general TRR audience, after which we can do a brief (2 weeks?) drafting period on NS forums, hopefully making this entire project done in just over a month or a month and a half.

Thoughts appreciated.