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This weekend, the maritime industry celebrates the Day of the Seafarer, a day for remembering and honoring the role that seafarers play in the global economy – and the challenges they face.

“The world counts on seafarers,” said Secretary-General António Guterres. “Ships transport a remarkable 90 per cent of the world’s commodities – from grains and energy, to consumer goods and much more. Without ships and the women and men who work on them, economies would stall and people would starve.”

This year, the IMO is calling seafarers to share the story of their own personal voyages in a social media campaign. The agency has asked seafarers to post two photos on Twitter using hashtag #SeafarersJourney: one photo of their first voyage and another of their most recent voyage. IMO is also asking for stories about what has changed over the span of seafarers’ careers.

“Every day, hundreds of thousands of seafarers are underway on ships, while others take their well-deserved break – getting ready for their next voyage. Their ships are key movers of global trade, and engines of the global economy, transporting cargoes such as food, medicines, electronics and more,” said IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim in an address. “Shipping and the call of the oceans, form a way of life. It is a meaningful, important career that provides a solid foundation for life and offers endless opportunities to learn and progress. This noble profession is something that I hold close to my heart and for many of us, our voyages are the start of a lifelong maritime journey.”

The day is also an opportunity for the industry to reflect on the future of seafaring, including working conditions, recruitment questions and public perceptions of a seafaring career. The COVID-19 pandemic, the crew change crisis and the curtailment of shore leave have had a measurable impact on seafarer happiness, with potential effects on the industry’s retention rate and reputation as an employer.

“What happened during the COVID crisis, with crews stuck for months on board vessels, has done lasting damage to how shipping is perceived,” said Capt. Rahul Khanna, Global Head of Marine Risk Consulting at Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty. “Some initiatives are pushing for change, but the fact that the seafaring community often feels like secondhand workers compared to those on shore must be addressed by the ship-owning community and stakeholders . . . We need to emphasize the positives of seafaring to the young men and women who are willing to explore it.”

With the number of joint initiatives and projects being planned and executed between IAPH and IMO on energy transition, trade facilitation and port call optimisation, IAPH communications director Victor Shieh finally visited IMO’s headquarters in London this week to meet up in person for the first time with social media and communications officer Karine Langlois. Both have been working together during the pandemic on various projects. Subjects discussed included communications around IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) activities as well as Facilitation (FAL) with a particular focus on adoption of Maritime Single Window systems.  Just in Time Arrivals and work around biofouling also featured as well as the participation of IAPH as official partner of the GreenVoyage2050 partnership project between the Government of Norway and IMO.

In March 2022, a rather unusual event took place in Athens. Co-organized by Panteion University and the Japanese Embassy in Greece, a hybrid workshop was successfully completed, aiming at “Establishing a Free and Open Maritime Order” with a focus on bilateral cooperation between the two countries. It is perhaps the first time in the last decade that academics and government officials between Japan and Greece have come together at a public event dedicated to maritime security and cooperation.

The timing of the event was not random. Greece’s relationship with Turkey is deteriorating and tensions are escalating dangerously due to their maritime disputes in the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The dispute is complicated, and perceptions from each side are different. According to Turkey, for instance, everything starts back in 1923 and the Treaty of Lausanne, the main treaty between the two countries concerning the border delimitation and demarcation, including of the Aegean Sea. But the main issue in the last decades is the potential undersea resources of the maritime area and control of the waters and seabed.

Of course, tensions are nothing new in the historically troubled bilateral relationship between the two nations. However, back in summer 2020, the crisis almost turned into an accident, which could easily turn into a conflict. The Turkish survey ship Oruc Reis, along with a part of the Turkish fleet, came face-to-face with their Greek counterparts in the eastern Mediterranean. The Turkish side was willing to proceed to seismic surveys in the Greek-claimed part of the seabed without the necessary permission as provisioned by the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS). The result was fleets on high alert, two warships colliding, and foreign navies intervening. In a more general context, it was the longest and worst crisis since the events of the 1970s, which culminated in the Turkish invasion in Cyprus.

Certain elements of the above may sound familiar to Asia watchers. In the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, talks go nowhere and both countries have different perceptions fueled by nationalism and their respective domestic political agendas. The equivalent of the Lausanne Treaty is the Treaty of Shimonoseki, with different interpretations from the parties involved. Collisions in the disputed waters are frequent, especially since 2010, with the last notable one, also by coincidence in 2020, between a Japanese naval ship and a Chinese fishing vessel, with the Japanese vessel receiving damage. Of course, the main issue concerns the ownership of the islands and subsequent demarcation of the sea areas, which will in turn affect the exploitation of the potential natural resources on the seabed.

Hence, it is indeed not a surprise that Japan found a potential ally in Greece and vice versa. For a start, both are maritime nations, and both are in the top three of ship-owning countries worldwide. Both are also adopting a defensive posture in terms of security policy, and are facing similar threats and security dilemmas in their neighborhoods. In the eyes of Greece, Turkey is a revisionist power that unilaterally challenges the status quo and poses threats to the regional and international security. For Japan, this role is played by China. Both countries feel that their territorial sovereignty is threatened and are siding with international law in order to find solutions; their neighbors, however, have a different interpretation of reality and the law.

As a result, the maritime-themed workshop between the two countries was a pleasant surprise. An exchange of ideas for cooperation is always the first step, especially in the areas of strategic dialogue and joint training. As expressed by the Japanese side and professors from Keio and Tokyo Universities, future cooperation could include navy-to-navy and coast guard-to-coast guard Staff talks; exchanges on maritime domain awareness (MDA) and best practices at sea; and more importantly, bilateral participation in regional exercises and training in the Pacific and the Mediterranean Sea.

The title of the event is notable as well. The call to establish a “Free and Open Maritime Order” is just a slight alteration of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy, which Japan has been following since the Abe administration. The goals of the latter are, very briefly, to connect the “Two Continents” (Africa and Asia) and the “Two Oceans” (the Pacific and the Indian), based on the principles of “international cooperation” and of a diplomatic initiative with a “panoramic perspective of the world map.” The steps toward Greco-Japanese cooperation are an extension of this strategy, moving it a past the east coast of Africa. In that sense, it’s a recognition of the important geopolitical area of the eastern Mediterranean and the potential chokepoints on the Aegean Sea.

It is also an indirect step toward the enhancement of the EU-Japan bilateral relationship and bolstering Japanese influence in the European Union through Greece. And Japan is not alone is seeing this opportunity. Greece became a part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through a years-long process to bolster China’s influence in the European country.

The Chinese conglomerate COSCO de facto controls one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean, Piraeus, and is a significant shareholder of the second biggest port of Greece in Thessaloniki. In public diplomacy terms, the cooperation and understanding between China and Greece has advanced enormously during the last decade; this engagement has translated into political gains for the Chinese. One prominent example was an incident back in 2017, when Greece blocked an EU statement criticizing the human rights record of China in the United Nations. At the time, the Greek foreign minister stated the resolution was an “unconstructive criticism of China.”

Of course, Japan is not China, and their goals are different. There is no Japanese equivalent of China’s BRI project, aiming to expand into the Balkans. That said, the China-Greece relationship is more advanced; that also means that the Greco-Japanese one has its limits.

Nonetheless, the new steps toward Greece-Japan engagement should be enhanced and cultivated further. In security and defense policy, Greece can and should invest in bilateral talks with Japan, as mentioned earlier. In tactical terms, engagement in military and especially naval exercises should become the norm, taking advantage of the Japanese military technology, experience, and special relationship with the United States. Washington is a security provider for both countries, through NATO and subsequent bilateral treaties with Greece, and through a special long-standing military alliance with Japan.

The problem, however, is more on the Greek side. Greece for decades engaged in a short-sighted, neighbor-oriented foreign policy. The top priority in the agenda was, justifiably, Turkey; the second priority was a name dispute with a small neighbor to the north, draining large politico-diplomatic resources due to misrepresented cultural imageries and nationalistic sentiments. Now, with the latter issue resolved, Greece finally seems willing to catch up with the world. Greece has become engaged in African diplomacy, trying to secure votes for a U.N. Security Council placement, and in East Asia as well, with following visits of the minister of foreign affairs to India and Japan, for instance.

For Greece, cultivating a relationship with Japan, other than public diplomacy events and yearly celebrations in their embassies, will lead to the incorporation of useful lessons on how to deal with maritime disputes and how to bolster its deterrence posture. The exchange of ideas will be valuable for understanding how to respond together to common existential threats from their neighbors, while taking the differences into account. It is a unique opportunity to gain experience and knowledge from a global actor and potential ally.

Japan seems ready to contribute; Greece needs to step up.

With concrete action awaiting to lay out the path to decarbonize maritime emissions, Patrick Verhoeven, managing director of the IAPH, and Jutta Paulus, member of the European Parliament and rapporteur for the revision of the EU emissions reporting regulation, discussed setting out rules and mutual expectations.

“Well, what we have been doing worldwide so far is like the game Mikado, whoever moves first, loses,” said Jutta Paulus, member of the European Parliament comparing efforts to agree on global regulations to reduce emissions in maritime to a game of pick-up sticks, popular in Paulus’ native Germany. The game requires one to remove sticks from a pile without causing disturbance to the others.

“And that is obviously not the correct way to address the crisis,” she warned. Paulus is deeply ingrained in this topic as she, within the parliament is a member of the committees on Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety; Industry, Research and Energy; and Transport. She is also the EU rapporteur for the revision of the monitoring, reporting, and verification regulation (MRV) , the EU’s maritime emissions and fuel usage report system.

“If anyone said to me, why don’t we bring in a global carbon tax, which is negotiated on the IMO level and applied worldwide to every single journey, I would say, let’s do it tomorrow,” she said.

Countering the argument that the planned inclusion of maritime in the EU’s emission trading scheme (ETS) will cause a patchwork of regulations to adhere to, she said, “I don’t think that the EU will say, we won’t participate in any global measure because we like our ETS so much. I think if there was a measure that was actually working and where there are no loopholes, you would of course say well, great shipping is covered in this global measure so we can take it out of the ETS again.”

This might be relieving to hear for the maritime industry, but Paulus also made clear that there is not much desire from the other included sectors to have maritime be a part of the deal. “When the talk started about including maritime in the ETS, it was not yet clear whether shipping would be a siloed ETS or whether it would be included in the general ETS where power production industries are in. Those now say the avoidance cost in shipping is much higher than in power production, which will hurt us but not shipping,” she explained, adding that “if there was a global measure, the commission would also receive pressure from the industry to take out shipping again.”

Getting everyone on board

The managing director of the IAPH, Patrick Verhoeven, agreed that it is good to have front running regions such as Europe who move ahead. “And I must say, I am very pleased to hear that potentially, once there is a global instrument, we would withdraw shipping out of the ETS again. I think that’s a good incentive to make progress at a global level.”

The above article is an excerpt from the cover interview of Ports & Harbors magazine, September/October 2021. Ports & Harbors is the membership publication of the International Association of Ports & Harbors.

Jutta Paulus has been a German member of the European Parliament for the Greens/European Free Alliance since July 2019. Before, she worked in quality management and controlling in laboratories and hospitals. Paulus holds a bachelor of pharmacy from the Philipps-Unversität of Marburg, Germany.

Patrick Verhoeven is the managing director of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), responsible for policy and strategy. The organisation represents about 170 ports and some 140 port-related businesses in 90 countries worldwide. Prior to joining IAPH in 2017, Patrick spent twenty-four years in Brussels representing the interests of shipowners, port authorities, terminal operators and ship agents at EU level. He started his career in 1991 with the Antwerp-based ship agent Grisar & Velge. Patrick holds a PhD in applied economics and a bachelor’s in law from the University of Antwerp.

Resource: S&P Global Market Intelligence