Why is shipping always seen as the villain?
For an industry that is often termed invisible, and even uses the term “sea blindness” when it comes to the public, it is surprising just how much bad press shipping still manages to get. Why, oh why, is shipping so often seen as a pariah?
SETTING THE SCENE
Ok, first off let’s set the usual scene and get that dreaded statistic out of the way. Yes, 90% of trade moves by sea. You may have heard that before, not least because the figure is mentioned in about 100% of all articles, books and presentations on the matter.
You may be less aware that in doing so, shipping carries about 11 billion tons of cargo each year across oceans, rivers and seas. carried on around 100k commercial ships of 100 gross tons and above. That is a lot. Remember that when we go through the criticisms shipping faces, because if you can think of another way of moving that much stuff the world would like to hear.
So, we have quite a few ships, carrying almost everything we use, want or need. It also does this in a surprisingly clean manner. For example, according to the United Nations, shipping produces just 2.2% of the world’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and contributes less than 15% of global transport’s GHG emissions. Still too much, but not as bad as you have been likely led to believe.
Shipping is not a “thing” in the way Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc are “things”, although shipping shares some of the characteristics of these supranational organisations. You can’t complain to “shipping”, people slag it off as an entity, when it is so much more. Nor can you expect “shipping” to reply other than through the organisations set up to represent and regulate it. So those of us who care have to do it instead…
BIG GETTING BIGGER
The figures (both good and bad) surrounding shipping are set to expand even further. According to the OECD, global transport activity will more than double by 2050, and traffic emissions will rise by 16% compared to 2015 baseline levels.
Global freight transport activity is also forecast to grow 2.6-fold (measured in tonne-km) — with freight CO2 emissions unfortunately projected to increase by 22%. Which granted is a problem, but one that shipping is working hard to address.
Decarbonisation is a word that has long been in the minds and on the lips of shipping. As companies roll out measures to both reduce emissions and to make the industry all it should be. A clean, green and digitalised mode of transport, with maritime informatics at its beating heart.
The number of ships seems likely to grow, the size of the ships too — and as billions more consumers all want to get their hands on stuff, and nations all clamour to raise the standard of living of their people, well…shipping is the answer. It just seems perhaps too many ask the wrong questions.
YOU’VE GOT NO FANS
All too often the business of shipping is seen as a shadowy, obscure and opaque world. Show me a global business that isn’t! Ships are therefore seen as a threat, and seafarers treated with disdain and even fear.
From the moment the planes (not ships, you’ll note) hit the World Trade Center, crews were painted as a security problem and ships as a bringer of doom. The industry has always been a scapegoat and painted as an ogre.
A ship is too often seen as a dirty thing to the uninitiated. Something no one wants near their coast. Flying some strange colourful flag with an obscure country painted on the stern. Belching smoke and noise, the hull slathered below the water in dreadful chemicals designed to kill. While above the water it is pockmarked and rust-covered — a sign of the adventures exploiting riches around the world.
Alas, that is still the way that many people choose to see shipowners, as evil. With the shipping industry and its minions as their dreadful facilitator, helping them kill the planet while getting rich into the bargain.
ALL THE RIGHT MOVES
Shipping has been pilloried, criticised, slated, slagged off and made an example of. The entire industry has been tarred (pun intended) for using the fuels that governments the world over have allowed. Obeying the laws have seen shipping seen as a guilty party, which is pretty incredible and depressing.
Yes, shipping does have a strong lobbying voice in the corridors of power, and yes the International Maritime Organization (IMO), has perhaps been a little slow on the uptake of sentiment, and thus sluggish when it has come to producing the regulations that society has started to clamour for. The delay in making emissions cuts for the Kyoto Protocol was indeed a missed public relations opportunity.
That said, whether the environmental critics and Miss Thunberg are right isn’t really the point. Even though they are. Greta is right to call society out, she is right to bemoan the generations which have gone before, right to say our house is on fire, to demand more action, and more green options. It does seem she is the voice the planet needs, and more power to her.
Though she may be right, having shipping as such as the target of such ire is wrong. Two rights don’t make a wrong! Ships are amazing. Can they be better? Yes. But how many countries can claim to have measures equivalent to, or better than MARPOL? How many banned the discharge of plastics to sea in 1983 as shipping did? How many countries are subject to the same controls and checks as undertaken by Port State Control and others on ships? The nations which condemn shipping are never usually better than it!
REALITY BITES
Should shipping be better when it comes to the environment? Yes. Will they get better? Undoubtedly yes, yes, yes. Which makes it all the more galling to see the industry slagged off. It deserves to be better understood, not poked with a stick.
Documentaries such as the new online release “Black Trail”, which is an investigative journalist’s view of the industry, like to paint the whitewash of greenwash as blackwash. They slam all that shipping does as if it were the work of the bogeyperson of globalisation. They criticise the fuels, the decision processes behind them and the legal mechanisms underpinning them.
They seek to show that the industry doesn’t care, that owners just want the cheapest option and to hell with the planet. Which is simply not true, not fair and does not reflect the reality of an industry that is led, controlled and governed by rules. Forgetting the legislative argument, it is important to remember that fuel is a cost, so even the most psychopathic and world-weary shipping person would not for a second want to burn more than was necessary.
Efficiency is good for both pocket and planet. Shipping has become expert at delivering the maximum operational benefit from the fuel it burns with waste heat recovery and use cases those ashore might envy. Indeed, shipping is the model of the international rules-based system. It is the reflection of all that society has managed to do, to be and to create. We have tamed the tyranny of distance and the power of the sea. We have conquered the human instinct to fight, and instead of replaced it with trade. A far better way of doing things, and something to be celebrated.
MOVING AHEAD
This is our global trade which makes lives better. Trade which brings goods, food and fuel to the world. Which can help raise living standards, and which the post Second World War order and peace was built upon.
This trade model for the world, which was envisaged by Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt as the long-term goal of defeating tyranny. The Atlantic Charter called for swords beaten into ploughshares, and for wealth to spread from coasts across seas, to truly forge a world for all.
A vision with ships at its core. Our freedoms may be lived on land, but they are built at sea. The ships of today, gliding across oceans, tossed by storms. They do so to deliver for us. They do so based on rules which are agreed by our global governments.
Yes, there are some bad owners, rotten ships and pretty awful ways of operating — but these are not the norm. They would put anything in their bunker tanks and would happily belch blackness. However, they are being rooted out and put out of business. This is an industry that is working to improve, which is seeking the rules to adhere to, and the technological barriers to smash through.
GOOD COP, BAD COP26
One of the driving forces behind environmental action has been the global focus on tackling climate change. Again, just as with Greta, this is the right way to go. We want a clean planet, one that can breathe and looks and feels as it should.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is set to hold its next Conference of Parties (COP) in Glasgow (COP26) to monitor and review the implementation of the agreements made at COP21, the “Paris Agreement”.
Without shipping delivering on the demands to operate in an ever-cleaner manner, then Paris will remain a pipedream. But that is the power of shipping. The means and mechanism to deliver. The power to make the world work, to feed, clothe and energise us all. Doing so in a manner the world finds acceptable.
Shipping is a hero, not a pariah. It is the answer to how things can be done, how the miracles of global trade can be achieved. So, we need to make sure the message gets out, that yes shipping needs to do its bit on emissions, but we have to show how far we have come. While embracing how willing and able we are to do more.
