Two initiatives are being announced today to harness the power of shipping to help navigate the world to more sustainable waters.

Tonight, in London, global leaders of the shipping industry are presenting their plans to industry representatives for the sustainable future of international shipping, in a programme called Vision 2040.

This aims to tackle the three principal challenges facing the industry: rising oil prices, structural shifts in world trade and growing scrutiny of the industry’s social and environmental performance.

It is the first time such a wide-ranging approach has been taken to the challenges facing an industry which carries 90% of world trade.

The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI) brings together leading companies from across the industry and around the world, to plan strategically how shipping can address not just the challenges of climate change, but wider sustainability issues such as biodiversity, transparency and economic development.

It includes customers, insurers and financiers as well as operators, and is convened with the help of Forum for the Future and WWF.

Its objectives include attracting more public trust, improving staff working conditions, more responsible governance and better environmental stewardship, such as a reduced dependence on fossil fuels and faster implementation of technical innovations.

In 2007 a BP estimate put the global warming impact of shipping at around 600 - 800 million tonnes a year (5% of global greenhouse gas emissions). The International Maritime Organisation (IMO)'s Energy-Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) for shipping has been criticised as not radical enough to meet the challenge of climate change.

The Vision seeks to go beyond such mandatory standards. It will kick off with five workstreams, the first of which looks at the following four issues:

 

  1. developing new finance mechanisms to enable faster roll-out of new technologies and innovation;
  2. overcoming key non-financial barriers to the uptake of low-carbon and energy efficient technologies;
  3. reducing the life-cycle impact of ship materials;
  4. producing an overarching framework and governance structure to harmonise the growing number of beyond-compliance standards and rating systems.

 

The initiative’s 17 signatories come from across the globe, have a combined market value of half a trillion dollars, and include: ABN AMRO Bank N.V., BP Shipping, Bunge, Cargill, Carnival, China Navigation Co., Daewoo Shipbuilding, Gearbulk, Lloyd’s Register, Maersk Line, Rio Tinto Marine, Royal Sun Alliance, Tsakos Energy Navigation, Unilever and Wärtsilä.

Maersk Line chief operating officer Morten H. Engelstoft said: "We are in business for the long-term and therefore take an active role in defining the future we want to be part of. Delivering on a joint vision for our industry will help drive a needed change in operating models – thereby allowing economies to grow, trade to develop and social wealth to spread."

The initiative will have wide implications, as the members plan to engage their partners to achieve major supply chain efficiency gains, and explore ways to put a financial value on ecosystems goods and services to ensure responsible resource use and reduce ecosystem impacts.

Jonathon Porritt, founder director of Forum for the Future, the global non-profit organisation co-ordinating the initiative, said that shipping is at a crossroads: "After years of focusing on a commodity-focused ‘boom and bust’ business model, leaders in the industry have aligned to ask more of themselves – emphasising the urgent need to take the lead in reshaping the entire industry ahead of regulation.”

Unilever, which has an ambition to ambition to double its business and halve its environmental impact, is one member.

Its chief supply chain officer Pier-Luigi Sigismondi called the Vision "nothing less than the basis of a new business model".

"Quite simply," he said, "the only way we will achieve our ambition is by working in partnerships with all our stakeholders – from suppliers to NGOs".

Smart Ocean / Smart Industries

Also being launched today is a project which wants to obtain the help of shipping, offshore oil and gas and other ocean industries (such as ferries, fisheries, offshore wind, aquaculture) to improve scientific understanding of the ocean and climate.

The “Smart Ocean / Smart Industries” programme, being developed by the World Ocean Council (WOC), will install and coordinate sensing equipment to study and monitor the ocean and climate on the thousands of vessels and platforms owned by the project's participants, by collecting and reporting standardised oceanographic and atmospheric data.

One participant, Eskild Lund Sorensen, environmental manager of Maersk Line, explained that it will make its 500 commercial vessels, that plough the major trade lanes of the world, available to the ocean research community.

Transocean, which operates 100 oil and gas rigs, and already has a long history of partnering with the science community to collect environmental data, is also on board the initiative.

The UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) is convening a workshop on 12-13 December in Paris to coordinate the project.

The ultimate aim is to improve the safety and sustainability of commercial activities at sea and contribute to maintaining and improving ocean health.

The programme is being developed in close collaboration with national and international ocean and climate observations programmes, and with existing voluntary observation programmes.