The Pigou Club would love this:
KUALA LUMPUR: Every ship transiting the Strait of Malacca should pay 1 U.S. cent per dead weight tonnage into a fund to help maintain the world’s most important maritime trade route, regional maritime experts proposed Wednesday. [Experts propose upkeep for Malacca Straits, The Star, March 14 2007]
While I think it is marvelous, we should carefully differentiate the act of internalizing externality and the act of taxing for the sake of generating income. On top of that, the possibility shippers using the Sunda Strait instead of Malacca needs to be considered; a sufficiently high charge would increase that possibility. Further, an improperly implemented Pigovian tax would simply transfer the problems the Malacca Strait is facing to other areas with no Pigovian tax, instead of eliminating it.
