Shipping needs to improve its forecasting abilities so that it does not get weighed down by uncertainties and delay taking action, classification society Lloyd’s Register and its charitable arm the Lloyd’s Register Foundation said at the publication of a new report today.
The specially commissioned report, Global Maritime Trends 2050, which was written by Economist Impact and presented during London International Shipping Week, analysed likely future scenarios for shipping in 2050 and how these might appear in 2030 and 2040.
These were based on the speed of technology adoption and the level of global collaboration, to help the industry forecast risks, opportunities and required investment.
The report says the research is based on a “pragmatic literature review” and 16 in-depth interviews with maritime policy and industry professionals.
It sets out four possible maritime futures and another quartet of “what if” scenarios. The report said these are designed to “bring each of these futures to life through qualitative, fictional storytelling to understand the trends that would affect the maritime sector”.
The report identified several key changes that could materialise.
These included ports such as Houston, Shanghai and Mexico’s Lazaro Cardenas possibly becoming unusable with a 40 cm rise in sea levels by 2050. It pointed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s estimate that sea levels are expected to rise by 0.29 metres to 0.51 metres by 2100 in a business-as-usual scenario.
The report suggested women could make up 25% of the seafaring workforce by 2050 — compared with just 2% today — due to technological advancements.
“By 2050, the need for more tech-savvy ship managers could enable more women to take on managing positions on land and at sea, as increasingly autonomous ships and systems call for oversight and monitoring rather than intensive manual labour,” the authors said.
On the back of the International Monetary Fund forecast that Africa will have the world’s youngest median age of population by 2050, at just 25, African nations could become the dominant source of labour supply to the shipping industry.
Lloyd’s Register chief executive Nick Brown said: “Other industries are much better at forecasting. The financial sector, for example, has a deep understanding of potential future scenarios and how to prepare for them, but shipping lags behind.
“From tackling the energy transition to sourcing the next generation of seafarers, we’ve allowed uncertainty to delay action for too long. Now we’ve created a way for the industry to get a much better idea of the future. It’s time for them to get on board.”
Lloyd’s Register Foundation chief executive Ruth Boumphrey said: “Shipping is deeply intertwined with geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges.
“Amid global supply chain uncertainties, the urgent need to decarbonise, the integration of new technologies, concerns about human rights and safety at sea, and the future of labour supplies, it’s crucial that those in the shipping industry do everything in their power to anticipate, mitigate and overcome these challenges without causing harm elsewhere,” she said.
The report is part of a new joint multi-year Global Maritime Trends 2050 research programme between Lloyd’s Register and Lloyd’s Register Foundation that will include a series of reports commissioned to look at what is needed to create a “safe and sustainable” maritime sector in the face of geopolitical, macroeconomic, technological and other societal shifts.
