Time to rock the boat and transform shipping

Time to rock the boat and transform shipping
Jonathan Gornall November 23, 2019

Such is the density of international shipping represented as tiny symbols on global maritime tracking websites that the vast fleet continuously circling the globe appears as a massive, previously undiscovered landmass. The illusion is fitting. As the World Economic Forum put it recently, “If shipping were a country, it would be the world’s sixth-biggest greenhouse-gas emitter.”

Now a report from Seas at Risk, a collaboration of environmental non-governmental organizations, has further highlighted the threat posed by the industry – and proposed a simple solution. Ships, it says, should simply slow down. Reducing average speeds by 20% would cut emissions by up to 34%.

The problem with this go-slow quick fix is that, even if an industry competing to meet the demands of the global economy could be persuaded to adopt it, any gains would be quickly swamped by the growth in trade.

Each one of us has a vested interest in at least one of those ships at sea, carrying oil, cars, toys, clothes or any of the desirable objects we buy from Amazon without a thought for how it will cross the world to our door.

Few parts of the world are more dependent upon this lifeline than the Arabian Peninsula. Zoom in on the region on any tracking site and the scale of the armada sailing to and from the great container ports of Jeddah, Fujairah and Dubai becomes graphically apparent.

The list of the world’s top 20 container ports reveals not only the origin of the stuff we buy but also where it’s bound. East and Southeast Asia account for nine of the 10 busiest container ports in the world. China, the world’s factory, is alone the source of a quarter of all sea traffic. The only port in the top 10 not in China, Singapore or South Korea is Dubai, a regional container hub busier than any in Europe or the US.

The Middle East is doing more than its share to keep the propellers of international trade churning, contributing substantially to the threat posed by shipping to climate change and adding to the environmental burden already attributable to the region’s growing demand for electricity and desalinated water.

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