Support the seafarers, and forget carbon for now
LogOn, February 2010 - it seems we were right to not make too much of COP15 in our comment last month.
Even IMO, an organisation not known for being opinionated or courting controversy, described COP15 as ‘disappointing’. Indeed it was: a lack of decision and guidance was evident throughout, not merely from the shipping and transport perspective.
So on the one hand shipping is not being forced into regulations it did not, and does not, want. But on the other hand, it is no nearer knowing what it has to do in the future to clean up its image. Many will say that shipping is the cleanest and ‘greenest’ way of moving large amounts of cargo over long distances. They have a point – that is basically correct. But in areas where there are large concentrations of ships, such as busy ferry and container ports, particularly when they are near centres of heavy population, as they often are, the pollution arising from ships is all too evident. There is still a lot that can be done to make ships more in tune with the environment, and we cannot help but feel that these measures have to go well beyond merely reducing fuel consumption, lowering carbon emissions, or switching to lower-sulphur fuel (the manufacture of which could create as much environmental damage as the use of it is intended to prevent). Ships are mainly employed taking commodities from where they are produced to where they are consumed, and in that they do a great job. But how necessary are all of those journeys? Does it really make environmental sense, rather than just purely economic sense, to move vast quantities of raw materials halfway round the globe, then move the finished goods back again? Or even to move oil vast distances merely to bunker a ship to travel back to where the oil came from?
So 2010 is not likely to be the year in which climate change had a big impact on shipping. Instead, the IMO has decreed it is to become the year of the seafarer. A good move – seafarers deserve more recognition. Let’s hope IMO, with the backing of the rest of us, can fulfil this need.
