In brief


What is the TEAP about?

The Tool for the identification and assessment of Environmental Aspects in Ports (TEAP) has been developed to assist port authorities in identifying aspects and in assessing their significance.

Although there is a high percentage of European ports that have already identified their Significant Environmental Aspects (SEA), most of these ports do not use any standardized method. For this reason, the need to develop such a tool.



Who is the TEAP for?

TEAP can be used by any type of port authority or port company willing to implement a systematic and scientific-based method to identify its SEAs.

The use of this methodology could be beneficial not only for individual port authorities but also for the whole port sector. As the individual ports are engaged in the objective of continual improvement of their environmental performance, the sector as a whole will be able to demonstrate evidence of progress in its environmental performance.



Where TEAP has been implemented?

In order to develop TEAP a previous research was done in the framework of PERSEUS project on environmental performance of four pilot ports of the South European Seas (SES). These four selected ports that were studied in depth were the Port of Barcelona (Spain), the Port of Thessaloniki (Greece), the Port of Constanta (Romania) and the Port of Varna (Bulgaria).

Based on the results of this research, TEAP has been developed and it is being implemented in the pilot ports as well as in other EU ports, including different size, type of cargo, location, etc.



Why TEAP is important for the Ports?

There are several reasons that justify the importance for identifying environmental aspects and assessing their significance. The key driver is the need for port authorities to be in compliance with the legislation and regulations for which they have liability and responsibility. This fundamental requirement is non-negotiable and an inventory of SEAs is a component sine qua non of any credible Environmental Management System (EMS).

Other reasons for identifying SEAs include their role in the continuous improvement of the environmental quality, responding to the concerns of stakeholders, and the production of evidence-based environmental reports.

The process of identifying aspects has to be carried out in a rigorous way in order to be credible, meet the demands of different interested parties and execute effective internal work procedures. For all this, providing ports with a tool such as TEAP can facilitate their environmental daily tasks.


How the Ports (or the interested parties) can use TEAP?

TEAP is a user-friendly, practicable and time-effective tool that can be used on-line linked to PERSEUS website (www.eports.cat).

The port will introduce its contact details, identify its main activities, apply a set of criteria and finally it will receive an output with its SEAs.



All this information is confidential and only the user of the tool will have access to its results.