Another massive effort by the shipping industry to get the world’s leaders to act on the crew-change crisis was unveiled this week at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Dialogues. The Neptune Declaration brings together more than 300 companies behind four planks aimed at relieving the crisis that has left thousands of seafarers stranded on ships well beyond the expiry of their contracts: a crisis that is enhancing the risks of accidents and the threat to global supply chains.
There is no doubt it is an impressive effort, involving the likes of AP Moller-Maersk, Anglo-American, BP, Cargill, CMA CGM, Cosco, Dow, Fidelity International, Hapag-Lloyd, ING, Louis Dreyfus Co, MISC, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, Mediterranean Shipping Co, NYK, Rio Tinto, Shell, Trafigura, Unilever, Vale and Vitol.
But, at no fault to the shipping industry and the efforts already made that have led to safe crew-change protocols and International Maritime Organization and United Nations General Assembly resolutions on international cooperation to address the issues, the Neptune Declaration is indicative of a failure to achieve change so far.
Vital to trade
Amazingly, this is despite the — surely by now widespread — understanding that the maritime industry carries 90% of world trade, at a time when keeping the delivery of foods, commodities, medicines and goods going should seem to be vital to governments around the world.
TradeWinds and senior executives such as Euronav chief executive Hugo De Stoop have previously argued that shipping could be partly to blame for being ignored because it has done much to hide away from paying taxes or facing governments’ influence in the past.
But now is not the time to look back as the spread of new highly transmissible strains of Covid-19 induce governments to clamp down again with lockdowns that do not take account of helping to keep trade moving.
The four new declarations again demand seafarers be recognised as key workers, a call that has been made for almost a year now, and add a request for them to be given priority access to Covid-19 vaccines.
They also acknowledge some poor practice by the industry in ensuring — as can be done, but has not always been the case — that the movement of crews is done in ways that do not pose a risk to populations by seeking again to implement gold-standard health protocols. And they look for better collaboration between ship operators and charterers, which has also sometimes failed to be the case.
Who, having seen what has happened, will be encouraged to take up a career at sea in the future? That question will become ever more pressing
Finally, they ask for air connectivity between key maritime hubs to be ensured — an altogether more difficult request when commercial airlines are struggling financially with the loss of huge swathes of their business.
Taking these declarations to Davos needs to be part of starting to convince governments that shipping is not peripheral to eventual global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic but should be central to building back international business.
Elements within shipping have started to voice a fear that the experience of the past year, in which seafarers have been left to struggle alone with the physical and mental pressures of keeping going, will not bode well for the industry’s future employment prospects.
Who, having seen what has happened, will be encouraged to take up a career at sea in the future? That question will become ever more pressing as better-educated seafarers are required to operate the technically much more complex vessels of the future.
There is also an issue that has possibly not been considered by many outside shipping yet.
Vaccine dilemma
Vaccination programmes are steaming ahead in a handful of Western nations, and other countries that can afford the huge costs of these mass inoculation schemes will follow suit as they become more confident about a positive immunity outcome and a lack of major side effects.
But many seafarers come from countries less likely to be able to afford to run mass vaccination schemes this year.
What happens if rich countries start asking for vaccination passports for anyone entering them? Will ships be stopped from entering ports, or will the crew-change crisis just keep on going?
The Neptune Declaration needs to work on humanitarian grounds not just for the well-being of seafarers but for the whole world to get back up on its feet.
