The International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments, 2004 (BWM Convention), is concerned with preventing, minimizing and ultimately eliminating the risks to the environment, human health, property and resources arising from the transfer of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens, through the control and management of ships' ballast water and sediments. The BWM Convention also aims to avoid unwanted side-effects from that control and encourages developments in related knowledge and technology. The 2018 consolidated edition aims to provide an easy and comprehensive reference to the up-to-date provisions and unified interpretation of articles and annex of the BWM Convention

This publication provides useful practical information to Governments, particularly those of developing countries, administrations, shipowners, port state control authorities, environmental agencies and other stakeholders on the implications of ratifying, implementing and enforcing the Ballast Water Management Convention. The aim is to encourage the further ratification and proper implementation and enforcement of the Convention. However, it should be noted that, the legal purposes, the authentic text of the Convention should always be consulted

The Maritime Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) at its fifty-first session in April 2004, approved a programme for the development of guidelines and procedures for uniform implementation of the Ballast Water Management (BWM) Convention, listed in Conference resolution 1 including additional guidance required but not listed in the resolution. The programme was further expanded at the fifty-third session of the MEPC in July 2005 to develop and adopt 14 sets of Guidelines, the last one being adopted by resolution MEPC.173(58) in October 2008. This 2009 edition reproduces the text of the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' ballast water and sediments, the four Conference resolutions, and the 14 sets of Guidelines developed and adopted by the MEPC of the Organization

The human-mediated introduction of species to regions of the world they could never reach by natural means has had great impacts on the environment, the economy, and society. In the ocean, these invasions have long been mediated by the uptake and subsequent release of ballast water in ocean-going vessels. Increasing world trade and a concomitantly growing global shipping fleet composed of larger and faster vessels, combined with a series of prominent ballast-mediated invasions over the past two decades, have prompted active national and international interest in ballast water management. Assessing the Relationship Between Propagule Pressure and Invasion Risk in Ballast Water informs the regulation of ballast water by helping the Environnmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) better understand the relationship between the concentration of living organisms in ballast water discharges and the probability of nonindigenous organisms successfully establishing populations in U.S. waters. The report evaluates the risk-release relationship in the context of differing environmental and ecological conditions,including estuarine and freshwater systems as well as the waters of the three-mile territorial sea. It recommends how various approaches can be used by regulatory agencies to best inform risk management decisions on the allowable concentrations of living organisms in discharged ballast water in order to safeguard against the establishment of new aquatic nonindigenous species, and to protect and preserve existing indigenous populations of fish, shellfish, and wildlife and other beneficial uses of the nation's waters. Assessing the Relationship Between Propagule Pressure and Invasion Risk in Ballast Water provides valuable information that can be used by federal agencies, such as the EPA, policy makers, environmental scientists, and researchers.

On a daily basis, every ship at sea, transports millions of marine organisms which have been taken onboard with ships' ballast water. The World Wildlife Fund has estimated that about 7.5 M litres of ballast water are released every hour into US waters alone with 10 Bn litres a year therefore being transferred round the world. In February 2004,