To say the least, the coronavirus pandemic has been an eye-opener. The challenges of living in a pandemic world these past four months are disruptive, sad and at times overwhelming to even the strongest of people. That said, four months is enough time to gain insight and perspective into what positives can develop when the world is given a mandatory timeout or reset:

1. If there was ever any confusion about priorities before Covid-19, they should be pretty darn clear today. Family, loved ones, friends and health are all that matter in life. Regardless of what else is happening in the world, if this circle is intact, almost everything else is bearable.
2. If you do not have passion for what you do for your career or the people you work with, either fix the situation or move on. Now that we all see how fragile everything truly is, there is no excuse for not believing in what you do, especially since you are devoting such a huge chunk of your life to it. You need to be passionate about your career at a company you believe in and surround yourself with people you respect.
3. When you are not caught up in the historically normal non-stop treadmill of daily frenetic action and instead are physically isolated from the rest of the world, this can be the best way to open your eyes fully to absorb what is going on around you in terms of prejudice, inequality and social injustice.
4. We now know how much we want, need and rely on direct human contact. A warm handshake from a trusted client; a hug from a friend that you are so happy to see; a high-five from a likeminded stranger at a sporting event; a kiss on the cheek from someone dear. People need these warm connections and there is not one of us who will ever take these opportunities for granted ever again.
5. It is now more apparent than ever how many people work so hard every day to make your life more pleasant, manageable, safe and comfortable. These everyday human heroes include delivery people, healthcare providers, waiters, waitresses, busboys, flight attendants, teachers, police and firefighters, check-out people, office cleaners, transportation workers, retail sales people, and the list goes on and on. This reset must result in a kinder and more appreciative attitude to these wonderful people who are truly in the front lines of making the lives of so many others better. Kindness needs to be supplemented with fairness in sharing the wealth.
6. It is very easy now for everyone to better see and appreciate the fragility of the many institutions that are so important to our way of life. Universities, philanthropic institutions, and state infrastructure (police, fire, education and hospitals) are all currently operating in the danger zone. Commerce creates wealth, and the tax system and philanthropy help to rightfully redistribute it. We all have our role to play and it should never be more clear that paying (and donating) your fair share is not only a requirement, but also a privilege.
7. Working from home can be a tremendous breakthrough that will have positive implications long after the demise of Covid-19. It also can become exhausting, debilitating, lonely and the source of emotional duress. Like everything in life, a proper balance when the world allows will result in greater productivity, increased flexibility that should improve work-life equilibrium, broader choices in home locations, and the ability to have more diversity in the workforce based on the increased ability to be productive without leaving the house.
8. It is more clear than ever that working at a company is a very important role in society. It does not matter if it is big or small, or in which industry. When you responsibly contribute to a good company, you are helping all your co-workers that are counting on you to protect their jobs. You are also serving deserving clients and earning returns for the real people who are investors and stakeholders. When you do your fair share of work with pride, especially during a crisis, you are an integral part of keeping the economy going and allowing your co-workers to thrive monetarily and emotionally. It is very easy during good times to lose track of how important this is. When people all around you are losing their jobs, it could not be clearer.
9. Even those with the best physical stamina and the strongest mental toughness can become depleted, fragile and a shell of themselves after a prolonged period of stress. It is critical that everyone recognizes and accepts this reality and has the courage, conviction, and self-confidence to speak up when needed and force themselves to detach completely from time to time to refresh. Doing this in times like these are a sign of strength and not weakness. Being aware of others in need of a break and intervening to help can make all the difference in the world.
10. In times of stress, true character always shines. That is when it is easy to look around and see the people who are helping to bring along and support those who are having a tougher time and may be truly in emotional, monetary, or physical distress. It does not matter if these are family members, long-time friends, new acquaintances, or outright strangers. The help can be material, or just a subtle act of kindness. The magnitude does not matter, but the intent and result are capable of restoring the belief and appreciation in humanity.Source: rivieramm

As from today (8 July) seafarers arriving in Hong Kong to join ships will be subject to deep-throat saliva screening for COVID-19, as part of a wider clamp down for people exempted from quarantine measures.

The move comes amidst a local flare up of the disease with 14 new cases confirmed yesterday in Hong Kong.

The new practice will naturally be a cause for delay as arrivals intending to join their ship will have to be isolated at the owners’ expense until the results of the test are received – which may be a matter of hours to one day.

Plans to turn away arriving crew who have not been tested before setting off from home are also expected to be introduced soon. A source close to the decision said that seafarers who arrive by air to the Hong Kong International Airport will be required to have a certificate showing they have been tested. What remains at issue at the moment is how long such a certificate can remain valid.

Meanwhile there is currently no plan to mandate that seafarers who disembark their vessels in Hong Kong be tested for the virus. The current arrangement is that the crew remain on the vessel until transport is arranged for their passage to the airport.

An incident that occurred at the end of last month may have influenced the latest decision. Eleven crew members of the Panama-flagged containership, MSC Flavia, were tested positive for COVID-19, upon arrival at the port of Ningbo, having joined the ship in Hong Kong on June 24.

Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection yesterday later revealed  that of the 11 crew members, nine of them embarked on the ship from Hong Kong on June 24 with six arriving in Hong Kong from Indonesia, two from Greece and one from Croatia between June 21 and June 23.

All were declared to be asymptomatic on arrival in Hong Kong. Two of the nine cases were subsequently detected as having fever on arrival in Ningbo while the other seven were asymptomatic.

For the last several months the world has been shocked by the Covid-19 outbreak. Though first and foremost a global public health problem, its impact has extended far beyond. Economists, sociologists, psychologists, and experts from all fields have begun to analyze the changes the pandemic has wrought in their areas.

Chief among these secondary effects is the economic impact. Many economists have predicted that the pandemic will create a global economic crisis, with some even saying it will be worse than the global financial crisis in 2007 or the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Governments are being forced to take drastic measures to prepare for this potentiality, and their policy responses will extend the impact of Covid-19 even further beyond its public health epicenter.

These effects are already being felt in the realm of maritime security. Indonesia has announced nearly $590 million in cuts to its defense budget. This significant budget reallocation from the defense sector will have a direct impact on the budget of the navy, which is at the forefront of Indonesia’s maritime security and maritime domain awareness. And Indonesia is far from alone—many countries in Asia have cut their 2020 defense budgets in response to Covid-19. Thailand, for instance, has cut its defense budget by $555 million. Other key maritime countries in the region such as Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines are also facing the same constraints.

These significant budget reallocations will decrease military capacity and are likely to weaken joint threat response capability as maritime cooperation and joint exercises are downsized or cancelled outright. The Philippines has already cancelled its Balikatan 2020 exercise with the United States and Australia. The U.S.-hosted Rim of the Pacific exercise has been shortened to a two-week, entirely at-sea event—a stark contrast to its five-week 2018 iteration.

Unfortunately, this hit to capacity in the region is coming just as maritime security threats appear to be intensifying. In the last few months, China has engaged in several aggressive operations in the South China Sea. In April it sent the , a Chinese government research ship, to conduct a seabed survey of Malaysia’s continental shelf. This escalated a standoff over oil and gas exploration involving both Malaysia and Vietnam that had started in December. A few weeks earlier, another incident occurred between Vietnam and China when a Chinese coastguard vessel sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat in the Paracel Islands.

Considering that these incidents occurred during the COVID-19 outbreak, China seems to be exploiting the weak positions of other claimant countries to assert its own claims. Indonesia should anticipate and better prepare for challenges to its own maritime entitlements, especially its exclusive economic zone near the northern Natuna Islands where China has often sent fishing fleets and coastguard vessels to assert its illegal nine-dash line claim.

Another potential challenge to Indonesia’s maritime security that may be exacerbated by Covid-19 is piracy. Indonesia and Southeast Asia have long been regarded as one of the most dangerous zones for piracy. More than 60 percent of all maritime piracy incidents between 1993 and 2015 occurred in Southeast Asia, with more than 20 percent of those incidents taking place in Indonesian waters alone. An economic downturn caused by the pandemic will not only impact the budgets of the military and maritime law enforcement agencies that combat piracy, but may actually trigger an increase in piracy incidents. As Robert McCabe observed, in 1993 there were only 10 incidents of piracy in Indonesia’s waters, while by 1999, just two years after the Asian Financial Crisis, the number of incidents had increased to 115—more than 10-fold in less than 10 years. Another statistic from the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery shows that in 2010, two years after the 2008 financial crisis, piracy incidents had increased 25 percent. These increases likely stem from a combination of strengthened economic motives to commit piracy and reduced law enforcement capacity at sea due to budget cuts. Maritime cooperation initiatives such as joint piracy patrols will also be affected by those cuts.

As Indonesia makes necessary budget adjustments in light of the economic impacts of Covid-19, it should be careful to consider the effects of those reallocations as well as the challenges most likely to materialize in the current environment. In the realm of security, Indonesia should pay special attention to threats that stand to be exacerbated both during and after the pandemic outbreak. Maritime security threats from an increasingly assertive China as well as a piracy problem that is likely to grow in the aftermath of the pandemic would suggest that budget cuts to Indonesia’s maritime capabilities will need to be carefully administered. If Indonesia can decide which capabilities to prioritize, it can mitigate the toll that these cuts will take on security in both its own waters and the region at large.

Source: https://amti.csis.org/

An urgent call to action has been made by several shipping and port industry partners to accelerate the pace of digitalization the cope with the new realities that will be faced in a post-COVID-19 new normal.

BIMCO, which is part of the call, has noted that while some port communities seized the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution and developed into full-fledged ‘smart’ ports, many others have barely grasped the essentials of digitalization. The latter continue to struggle with larger reliance on personal interaction and paper-based transactions as the norms for shipboard, ship-port interface and port-hinterland based exchanges, the organization said.

To date, only 49 of the 174 Member States of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) possess functioning Port Community Systems – co-signees call for wide-ranging adoption of secure electronic data exchange.

The call to action, titled “Accelerating Digitalization of Maritime Trade and Logistics”, noted the following: “The COVID-19 crisis has painfully demonstrated the heterogeneous landscape that currently exists across ports worldwide.

“While some port communities seized the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution and developed into full-fledged ‘smart’ ports, many others have barely grasped the essentials of digitalization and continue to struggle with larger reliance on personal interaction and paper-based transactions as the norms for shipboard, ship-port interface and port-hinterland based exchanges”

International Port Community Systems Association (IPCSA) Chairman Hans Rook, who was also one of the initiators of the development of a Port Community System for Rotterdam in the early 2000s, said: “It is great to see the whole industry supporting the same message that the International Port Community Systems Association has been promoting since its inception in 2011.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has proved the value of Port Community Systems and Single Windows and this Call to Action is a milestone in having the whole industry supporting Member States and port authorities to work together, collaborate and develop these critical systems.”

IPSCA Technical Paper: Standards and Harmonization – Where Are We Now and What is Next?

The co-signees include numerous priorities in the call to action including the support of smaller, less developed, and under-staffed port communities with technical facilities and personnel training.

These priorities also include assessing the state of implementation and find ways to enforce the already mandatory requirements defined in the IMO’s Facilitation (IMO FAL) Convention to support transmission, receipt, and response of information required for the arrival, stay, and departure of ships, persons, and cargo, including notifications and declarations for customs, immigration, port and security authorities, via electronic data exchange, making the transition to full-fledged single windows.

It calls for the establishment of a coalition of willing stakeholders to improve transparency of the supply chain, starting with long overdue introduction of the electronic bill of lading. It has already been suggested by many that the use of electronic bills of lading could be accelerated by the pandemic.

The call to action was launched by the following organizations: The International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), BIMCO, the International Cargo Handling Coordination Association (ICHCA), the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the International Harbour Masters’ Association (IHMA), the International Maritime Pilots Association (IMPA), IPCSA, the International Ship Suppliers’ Association (ISSA), the Federation of National Associations of Ship Brokers and Agents (FONASBA) and the PROTECT Group.

Source: https://porttechnology.org/

The most recent offering in the WMU Alumni Webinar series took place on 29 May with the topic of COVID-19 and Shipping: Maritime Law and Policy Highlights. Over 500 participants from 93 countries, and all continents, registered for the event that due to the subject matter was opened beyond WMU Alumni to general registration from the public.

The webinar addressed the primary impact the pandemic has had on maritime safety and security, and disruptions in the global supply chain that are severely affecting the normal course of the shipping business. Governments have been forced to impose a number of extraordinary law and policy measures and the retreat of countries to their borders raises many issues in terms of the international nature of shipping that is cross-border by definition. The webinar highlighted the policy measures adopted by States and the international community to address pressing maritime issues that have arisen out of these unprecedented circumstances, such as the recourse to the concept of force majeure to protect business and the recognition of seafarers’ rights in times of a global pandemic.

‍
Dr. Cleopatra Doumbia-Henry, President of WMU, opened the webinar noting that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a great equalizer, and a challenge across the globe. Two million seafarers are key workers in the global supply chain. They are essential workers and are vital for the global supply chain and world trade. She emphasized the need for countries to ratify and implement the international standards set out in the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC 2006) as amended and in particular with respect to access to medical care on board ship and ashore, as well as repatriation.  “This is not the time to pull back, close borders, and not allow global trade to operate smoothly,” she said, highlighting that United Nations organizations – the ILO, IMO, and ICAO – have come together, and jointly agreed with support of the industry, including ITF, ICS and other international shipping organizations to develop common guidance for the industry under the pandemic. Existing WHO guidelines are also to be taken into account.“ We can be proud of the maritime community and how it has come together to ensure respect for the rights of seafarers in these challenging times,” said the President. She also highlighted that under the MLC, 2006, a “seafarer” is defined as “any person who is employed or engaged or works in any capacity on board a ship to which the Convention applies.” This includes all those who work on board cruise ships irrespective of the capacity in which they work.

Katie Higginbottom, Head of the ITF Seafarers’ Trust was a guest speaker for the webinar. She reiterated the need for global support for the maritime industry and seafarers at the government level, emphasizing that their key role is largely unrecognized outside of the maritime cluster or sector. “There has been cooperation at the international, inter-governmental level in the maritime sector, but a difficulty in reaching outside the sector. Companies are doing their best, but are challenged by the lack of flights, and various different requirements around testing, quarantines, and lockdowns which prevent free movement,” she said.

The webinar was moderated by Professor Max Mejia: Director of PhD Programme, Associate Academic Dean and Head of the Maritime Law and Policy Specialization. WMU Professor Laura Carballo Pineiro, Nippon Foundation Chair of Maritime Labour Law and Policy, addressed the topic of Health Protection vs Human and Labour rights, emphasizing the following needs:

• Make the WHO International Health Regulations, 2005, and related WHO/ILO/ICAO/UNCTAD statements and guidelines work. While the international legal framework supports crew changes and respect for other seafarers’ rights, State cooperation is essential to enforce them.
• Support shipping companies to secure employment and global fair competition. The COVID-19 crisis is also an economic crisis and shipping companies are facing major liquidity problems that require public and private measures to save them from insolvency.
• Include seafarers, regardless of nationality, in national support schemes. While some States are already providing economic support, such as wage subsidies, only national seafarers are benefiting from them leaving others in a very precarious situation.
• Prioritize secured maritime creditors’ protection in case of insolvency. Shipping companies in distress might resort to (pre)-insolvency proceedings to restructure or refinance their debt. While these proceedings might stay enforcement proceedings over debtor’s assets, maritime creditors should be granted a special treatment for securing interrupted international trade.

Associate Professor Aref Fakhry addressed the topic of IMO conventions’ application and enforcement. His presentation centered on whether the crisis caused by the pandemic signals the brink of a collapse in the maritime regulatory framework, taking into consideration whether IMO conventions provide for the current state of emergency. The crucial issues of health inspections, quarantine, and disembarkation of sick persons were discussed in light of the provisions of the IMO’s Convention on Facilitation of International Maritime Traffic (FAL), 1965, as amended.

Looking ahead, Associate Professor Fakhry suggested that the effect of the pandemic would give impetus to an expansion of the place and role of sanitation and public health, as well as digitisation and trade facilitation, in maritime law and policy. On a positive note, countries and world institutions could leverage the crisis in order to push through much-needed changes in the maritime environment.

Several questions posed by participants were answered by the presenters during the webinar. A poll was also administered and indicated that the majority of participants felt that the existing international maritime regulatory framework is insufficient for dealing with the repercussions of pandemics, and that the top priority in the pandemic recovery period should be implementing sustainable business models.

The webinar was the fifth offering in the WMU Alumni Webinar series that was launched in the fall of 2019. The next webinar with the topic of Search and Rescue in the High North Region will take place on 11 June 14:00-15:00 CEST. Space for the webinar is limited, but WMU graduates are permitted to register one other professional colleague. If you are a WMU alumnus and would like more information, email alumni@wmu.se.

Source: https://www.wmu.se/

Dozens of seaports across Asia, Oceania, Middle East, Africa, Europe and Americas have pledged to remain open to merchant vessels to ensure the flow of essential goods throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

To date, more than 50 port authorities have signed on to support the Port Authorities Roundtable (PAR) COVID-19 declaration, initiated by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore for ports to commit to staying open to merchant vessels and work together to share best practices in ensuring that port operations can remain undisrupted.

“Now is the time, more than ever, for global supply chains to remain intact. This is critical for the flow of essential goods across the globe, and for global economic recovery,” said Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Transport and Health, Dr. Lam Pin Min, during the second PAR COVID-19 declaration video conference Friday

The declaration is also supported by international organizations and groups such as the International Maritime Organization, International Chamber of Shipping, International Association of Ports and Harbors, APEC Port Services Network and American Association of Port Authorities, Italian Port Association and Maritime NZ.

Source: https://www.maritimeprofessional.com/