- 2 days ago
As internet shopping has become increasingly common, the volume of cargo shipped has grown with the work that goes into moving freight becoming a relentless and sometimes dangerous task.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
00:30Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
01:00Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
01:12Where did the products we take for granted come from?
01:19My shoes were made in China, my shirt was made in Indonesia.
01:24All these different pieces, items, came from places across the ocean.
01:30And it's really incredible that all of these products can be shipped around the world,
01:35and yet my outfit was still really cheap.
01:42Thousands of miles travelled, for just a handful of dollars.
01:48These came by ship, these came by ship, my shoes probably came by ship,
01:53the microphones certainly, all this technology came by ship, the camera came by ship.
02:01You have containers filled with scrap metal, you have containers filled with hay,
02:05you have containers filled with waste paper.
02:07From the energy we use and the food we mainly consume,
02:10through to the gadgets we love to play with.
02:12It's 90% of absolutely everything.
02:1490% of everything consumed.
02:17It all came on a shipping container from the other side of the world.
02:21Sea shipping has taken command of our society, an essential link in a well-lubricated supply chain.
02:23It works out of sight, to quench our thirst.
02:24It's a very small amount of waste.
02:25It's a very small amount of waste.
02:26The sea shipping is a very small amount of waste,
02:27that's easy to do.
02:28It's a very small amount of waste, and if it's a small amount of waste,
02:30it's a very small amount of waste.
02:31Sea shipping has taken command of our society.
02:46An essential link in a well-lubricated supply chain, it works out of sight to quench our thirst for consumption.
02:55Shipping is pervasive, yet it slips under our radar.
03:01We are on the navigational bridge of motor vessel Puyelce. She is a container carrier.
03:08I am Captain Razvan Adrianitza from Romania and I am the master of this nice lady.
03:16This nice lady is more than 300 meters long. It belongs to a German owner, but it flies a Liberian flag.
03:24Its crew is made up of just 20 men, capable of running this floating city with no other help.
03:31In its containers, 80,000 tons of products, transported from one end of the planet to the other on behalf of thousands of exporters.
03:40What's the real story behind this industry? What's its impact on the environment? And how does it influence our lives?
03:51A lot of people attribute globalization to differences in wages.
03:59They say companies are going to Southeast Asia because workers earn less.
04:04That's not exactly right. Workers in Southeast Asia have earned less than workers in Europe and in the United States for hundreds of years.
04:12And you didn't have this degree of globalization. What made it possible was that transport costs fell enormously.
04:21It was possible to make use of those inexpensive workers to make goods that could be sold in a foreign market.
04:27The fascinating thing about low transport costs enabled by the shipping industry is that really a company can treat the whole world as a single factory.
04:45Before shipping became widespread, it was common to have very large factories.
04:56You would have raw materials coming into one end of the factory and you would have finished goods going out the other end.
05:03Nobody does that anymore. Nobody needs to do that anymore.
05:16Shipping has reshuffled the carts. Today, distances no longer exist.
05:22And a simple product such as the jacket is a result of planetary collusion.
05:26When you see a made in Bangladesh tag on your clothing, unfortunately, you're still not getting the whole story of, you know, where the cotton was grown,
05:42where that clothing was sewn into a piece of fabric or where it was dyed.
05:48If it has some sort of embellishment on it, maybe a rhinestone or a zipper, where were those components made?
05:55It may have been in a completely different country.
05:57All it's telling you really is the factory where it was finally, the final assembly happened.
06:05The made in tag limits itself to the last stage of a long journey.
06:09The cotton comes from the United States, but was woven and dyed in India.
06:14The buttons were made in Vietnam from plastic collected in Europe that was then processed in China.
06:26A total of 48,000 kilometers have been traveled, more than the Earth's circumference, and all that for the price of a subway ticket.
06:36Now we've gotten to a point where somehow locally made goods are more expensive than things that are shipped to us from the other side of the world.
06:42So, to me, there's something wrong with that equation.
06:47Obviously, there are externalities and hidden costs that the consumer is not paying for.
06:53The equation bears its secrets, and it may raise some questions.
07:07How can this industry offer transport at such a low cost?
07:11How are you doing, sir?
07:12Morning.
07:13What kind of lost?
07:14We are shooting a documentary on shipping, and we wanted to see if we can get in the port.
07:18No, no.
07:19Is this guy behind you with you?
07:20No.
07:21Okay.
07:22No, I think he's following us or something.
07:23Hi.
07:24How are you doing?
07:25Uh, you guys are filming?
07:26Yeah, well, we are trying to pull out and just pull in over there in front of that red truck.
07:36Hello, sir.
07:37What's up, buddy?
07:38How are you?
07:39What's going on today?
07:40Well, we are shooting a documentary.
07:42A documentary on what?
07:43On sea shipping.
07:44You know, shipping bringing 90% of everything we consume and everything.
07:47Do you have any kind of permits or anything?
07:49Uh, not for inside the port.
07:51I would like to get shots of the containers.
07:54Alright, can I have your license, registration, insurance?
08:04Under strict security, shipping operates behind the scenes of society.
08:09And this impenetrability has a name.
08:12Shippers call it sea blindness.
08:1760,000 vessels constantly sail the world's shipping lanes.
08:28They are the blood flow that fuels a global machine that supplies 7 billion humans.
08:36If 90% of what is manufactured or extracted from the planet is transported by sea,
08:42how can the shipping industry be so invisible?
08:45The ports, because the ships have got bigger and they need more water in which to berth,
08:56they've got further out.
08:58So you can't have a dock in the middle of London anymore.
09:02You can't have a dock in the middle of New York,
09:05because there isn't enough depth of water and there isn't enough space.
09:08So they've built these huge ports that are often a mile or so, at least outside of the centers of habitation.
09:14And it's just quite difficult to see these ships.
09:17And ironically, the reason we can't see the ships is because of their ever-increasing dimensions.
09:32Ships get bigger and bigger and bigger and it seems as though there's no limit now.
09:36There's no record ship size that lasts for more than a few months.
09:41Every few months there's a bigger ship that just is launched.
09:44The triple E is a newborn in the shipping family.
09:49With its 400 meters length, the equivalent of four football fields,
09:54it could hold ten Airbus A320s in a row.
09:58Or the Eiffel Tower.
10:00Or why not?
10:01The Titanic itself.
10:03But its specialty is carrying containers.
10:0618,000 of them on each voyage.
10:09If we line them all up, the result would be a 120 kilometer long steel snake.
10:20The more a ship can carry, the lower the price of shipping.
10:24Along with the economy of scale, there's an invention that has largely contributed to reduce transport costs.
10:31The container.
10:33So before you'd have a ship that would take weeks and months to unload
10:36because it would have 195,000 separate pieces of cargo.
10:40Now you've got, for example, 6,000 boxes.
10:43But they can all be unloaded and loaded in 24 hours.
10:47Over 500 million boxes transit the planet each year.
11:04500 million steel boxes, about which we don't know much.
11:08What do we carry in containers?
11:10What's ownership?
11:12So, except for the IMO cargo, containers containing IMO cargo and refrigerated cargo,
11:20practically we don't know exactly what is in that container.
11:25It can be anything.
11:27Each container is filled and sealed by the sender himself,
11:39before it's taken to the nearest port and loaded onto a vessel.
11:43Once at its destination, the box, still sealed, is unloaded and forwarded to its recipient.
11:50And, exceptions aside, only the sender and the recipient know what it contains.
11:57Usually the crew and the captains have no idea what they're carrying.
12:06These are just all containers to them.
12:09The ship line itself may not know what it's carrying.
12:12The ship line has received what's called a manifest,
12:16and the manifest has the information from each shipper.
12:20The shipper is saying, we've sent you this container,
12:24and inside it has wool sweaters.
12:27It's possible that that container has wool sweaters.
12:30It's also possible that that container has other things inside.
12:33It's a mystery.
12:35However, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
12:38thanks to its inspection program, has some idea of what these boxes may contain.
12:43In the last 10 years, we have seized more than 100 tons of cocaine,
12:4960 tons of cannabis, tons of heroin, tons of precursor chemicals for drug production,
12:56in addition to counterfeit goods, mystical goods, weapons, etc.
13:01I mean, there's no stopping in listing what we have seized in this program.
13:10More than half of the illegal drugs that flood the US and Europe arrive in these seemingly mundane boxes.
13:16However, these millions of steel boxes can conceal more than narcotics.
13:22The container is a perfect Trojan horse to bypass embargoes and fuel armed conflicts or terrorist organizations around the globe.
13:37Every port is a gap in the nation's security apparatus.
13:41Following 9-11, the US, together with its allies,
13:45has put in place an inspection policy aimed at scanning 100% of containers.
13:51In reality, things are slightly different.
13:55Just 2% of all the containers in the world are inspected.
13:59In my view, you don't need to increase the number of containers being inspected.
14:04Fortunately, most people want to follow the rules and they are not criminal.
14:13But there's still 98% that maybe are not profiled.
14:19But most of the companies, most traders, they want to follow the law.
14:29They are not criminals.
14:31Stonewalling or indifference, the authorities and the ship owners close their eyes
14:36and hope a terrorist attack on any of the world's 4,500 ports will never happen.
14:42It's another symptom of the generalized sea blindness.
14:46One of the biggest container shipping companies in the world, in fact the biggest, is Maersk,
14:50which most people on the street haven't heard of.
14:53But it's absolutely enormous. It has the revenues of Microsoft.
14:58It's extraordinary really. If you could imagine the equivalent of the software industry
15:05without knowing anything about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, this is a bit like shipping now.
15:11It's like a very, very important part of global trade.
15:15But unlike software or most other sectors, we know almost nothing about the companies that run this business.
15:21They don't attract any publicity, so even the world's number 2, 3, 4 shipping companies,
15:30most people don't know what the initials stand for.
15:33They've seen the names on containers, but they don't really know much about them.
15:37They don't know who owns them.
15:39They probably don't really know which countries they're based in.
15:42So it is kind of an area of unusually obscure kind of leadership, I think.
15:57Lack of transparency?
15:59Or a magic trick of gigantic dimensions capable of concealing an entire fleet and a pervasive industry?
16:06The shipping corporations and their leaders avoid the spotlights.
16:13They pull the strings of world trade remotely from European and Asian financial centers,
16:19two continents where more than 90% of the companies are based.
16:24Their annual turnover exceeds $500 billion.
16:27That's more than the total revenue of the airline industry,
16:31which makes shipping a heavyweight in the world economy.
16:40Most of them are privately owned. Most of them are family businesses.
16:45We are dependent on a very private, in both senses, industry.
16:54The top 10 shipping magnets on the planet.
16:57These people call the shots of our society.
17:00And 7 billion consumers depend on their companies.
17:03However, their names and faces are anonymous for most of us.
17:10John Fredrickson is an example.
17:12This Norwegian is worth more than $15 billion.
17:16And his lifestyle, although not as publicized, is that of a rock star.
17:21He never sets foot on his ships and travels by private jet to the tax havens where his companies are headquartered.
17:28I think you can divide ship owners in two broad categories.
17:33The one side is the industrial shipping.
17:36They don't really take a lot of chances on what we call asset play.
17:40They don't buy ships to sell it for a profit.
17:42They run a sustainable business over a long period of time.
17:51The other part of the industry is the guys that have enormous fortune.
17:56They don't pay tax and don't speak too much public about the business.
18:01And I think John Fredrickson is a typical figure in that sense.
18:10If you go to a petrol station and fill up your car,
18:13it's a high probability that that oil was actually transported by John Fredrickson.
18:22Fredrickson owns the largest tanker fleet in the world.
18:25Mostly based in Bermuda, his companies transport half of the crude oil extracted on the planet.
18:30But until proven otherwise, this is not a crime.
18:35We had a saying that it's a crime behind every fortune.
18:38And I think John Fredrickson is a typical character that fits into that story.
18:47In the 80s, he hit his first jackpot during the Iran-Iraq war.
18:52In league with the Ayatollah's regime, the young businessman placed his first tanker at the disposal of Iran,
18:58thus enabling the country under embargo to continue selling its oil and to finance its weapons.
19:05Later on, he made headlines in Norway.
19:09He had allegedly stolen $10 million worth of his client's oil to fuel his own vessels.
19:14And every time, the ship owners slip through the net.
19:20If some ship owners find ways to dodge the law, it's because the system allows them to do so.
19:26It's very easy for unscrupulous owners to slip out of the boundaries of law and justice.
19:40And the reason they can do that is because of the flag.
19:43This flag is also known as a flag of convenience.
19:49And thanks to it, a ship owner can wrap a veil of secrecy around his business
19:55and vanish from the legal frame of his country of origin.
19:58So you've got the coast, you've got 12 miles of territorial water,
20:04then you might have a 200-mile exclusive economic zone where that territorial,
20:10that coastal state will have the right to extract or exploit what's in the water and what's in the seabed.
20:16And then you've got the high seas and the high seas belong to nobody.
20:18Everybody has to follow certain rules. Everybody has a flag on a ship and that flag represents a sovereign state.
20:27And while that ship is in the high seas, then it's the responsibility of that sovereign state.
20:32And the laws of that sovereign state should apply.
20:37Once on the high seas, 200 nautical miles from any coast,
20:41a ship is subject to the laws of its flag's country.
20:43However, most Greek, Japanese, Chinese and German ships are registered in Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands or Mongolia.
20:53This way they slip away from the laws of their country of origin, a move that can be very rewarding.
21:02For example, I'm a ship owner. I'm looking to flag my ship.
21:07I don't want to use my own country's flag because, say, I'm British.
21:10So I know that there are certain taxes. I know that there are certain requirements regarding labour, minimum wage, things like that.
21:19So I don't want that hassle.
21:21So I think, OK, well, I'll just go online and I'll end up flagging to, I don't know, the Marshall Islands or Mongolia, which doesn't even have a coastline.
21:30Or Bolivia also doesn't have a coastline.
21:32So let's say I choose a Bolivian flag. I can probably register in 24 hours. I've suddenly got no requirements as to minimum wage.
21:40I have lower taxes. I have a much smaller wage bill for my crew.
21:44And a simple piece of fabric can reap massive returns.
21:51In their frantic race to cut down costs, ship owners have found these flags to be a major asset.
22:06Each year they gather in flags of convenience fairs where countries offering compliant regulation packages promote the benefits of their flags and make successful business deals between cocktails.
22:31We flagships in the Marshall Islands, the Marshall Islands Maritime Administrator. We're the third largest in the world.
22:47Dominica, it's the nature island, probably the most cost effective out of the registry.
22:52I would say the Bahamas is the best. We're in the top ten in the world.
23:14In the miracle recipe of low-cost shipping, the flag is the key ingredient.
23:19But far from the muted decision-making circles, convenience has its side effects.
23:26On the deck of the ships, where one and a half million seafarers live isolated and are victims of the fixed game of flags.
23:35Flag of convenience is a perfectly good phrase because that's what they are.
23:39They are convenient because you can employ anyone you like.
23:41So before, like American ships, under US law, have to employ American seafarers, but it costs about three or four times as much to run an American ship with American seafarers than it does with Ukrainians or Bangladeshis or Filipino or whatever crew.
23:55People take advantage of the vulnerable, and that's what the flag of convenience system is.
24:02It creates a system where the people are the vulnerable parts of that process.
24:05If it was a national system with a national employment group and a salary that was very attractive, then you wouldn't have to go to a developing culture and buy into all of those processes.
24:18Every era has its particular workforce, and as is the case in other areas of globalised industries, often you'll see that that changes according to who becomes more cost-effective, who becomes cheaper.
24:40So the Filipinos are quite cheap and they speak very good English, so they're very popular.
24:50Filipinos account for 40% of the sea shipping workforce.
24:55At sea, they earn five or six times more than in their country.
24:59They pay me for my job, but it's like a jail.
25:02It's like a jail.
25:03I can find a job in the Philippines, but the salary is $100 per month.
25:11How can I survive for that?
25:17Once past the horizon, the floating prison, as seafarers call it, enters a confinement area.
25:24We live in a highly connected world, but most ships, despite being at the epicentre of our global scheme, have no cell phone or internet connection for the crew.
25:37People who are on it for nine months, ten months, they should have internet access.
25:52They want to talk to their families.
25:54They want to Skype them.
25:55They want, you know, what the average seven-year-old takes for granted, that level of communication.
26:01And they don't have it.
26:02Some 20 men isolated for 10 months on a 300 meter long ship.
26:11Three meals a day, taken in silence, and in a handful of minutes.
26:17And long work days don't really boost the morale of the troops.
26:25A direct consequence of the long working hours, isolation, and lack of sleep,
26:3060% of all shipping accidents are due to human error.
26:37Try to make an analogy between a car and a ship.
26:40You can stop the car, you can lock the car, and get out.
26:44If you're on board a ship, and there's a technical problem with the engine, irrespective of the weather,
26:50one, on a calm day, you can be sitting there very isolated, very alone,
26:57different cultures, panic in different languages.
27:01And then you hear a storm.
27:05If you survive, you'll be lucky.
27:09Seafaring is the second most dangerous occupation in the world.
27:28The first is fishing.
27:29It's a very dangerous activity.
27:32You're dealing with weather, you're dealing with current,
27:34you're dealing with a huge object that you're trying to operate
27:37in the middle of a very dangerous place.
27:40It's not surprising.
27:41It's about 2,000 a year, seafarers are killed.
27:45The naufrage is almost a daily reality, unfortunately.
27:59You have 110, 120, 122 naufrages,
28:03large buildings with more than 300 tonneaux per year.
28:06This means, compared to the number of days of the year,
28:08you have a naufrage almost every three days on the globe.
28:11If you look at the worst cases,
28:15it's been where the ships haven't been maintained over a period of time,
28:19where the ship owner hasn't invested,
28:21where maybe they're not really ship owners.
28:23Maybe they don't love the industry in that sense.
28:26They speculate.
28:27The markets are good.
28:28I can invest this in some steel that floats at sea.
28:34Once again, the flags of convenience are implicated.
28:37Thanks to their permissive maintenance regulations,
28:41ship owners only spend the minimum
28:43and push their vessels to the limit.
28:47Three quarters of all shipwrecks involve boats more than 25 years old
28:51that have not been duly maintained.
28:53Almost half the fleet is made up of oil tankers.
28:56When a hull breaks, or a shipwreck occurs,
28:59the environment pays the consequences.
29:04In addition to the shocking images of black beaches,
29:07oil spills mostly happen in high seas,
29:09far from the camera's gaze.
29:12Every year, 150,000 tonnes of crude oil pollute the oceans.
29:16And that's not all.
29:18It's never 2,5% of the pollution of the sea.
29:23We always talk about the black sea.
29:25Of course, of course, we can't hide them.
29:27But we don't talk about what I call the black sea,
29:29what I call the black sea,
29:30what we call the black sea,
29:31which we don't see.
29:34What is it?
29:35What is it called?
29:36It's what we call the degasage.
29:38It's to say the fact of cleaning the engine,
29:40the engine, the pont,
29:42all kinds of toxic toxic products,
29:44which of course go to the sea.
29:45Of course, of course,
29:46a part of the water mixed with fuel.
29:49It's, at the global level,
29:50every year, 1,8 million tonnes.
29:57When they are not fully loaded,
29:59the ships pump in large amounts of water
30:01in their so-called ballast tanks
30:03to ensure their stability.
30:05Once the vessel is reloaded
30:06and sufficiently heavy to ensure its balance at sea,
30:09this water is released.
30:11Very often, thousands of miles
30:13separate the port where the water was taken
30:15and the port where it is discharged.
30:19Living creatures may be carried
30:21from one place to the other.
30:23And if the living creature picked up in this port
30:26is discharged into a port
30:28that has similar enough environmental conditions
30:31that it can survive,
30:33that new environment may be a new home
30:37for the flourishing of that new creature.
30:39We call that creature an invasive species.
30:43Originally innocuous species become invasive
30:47when they are dropped in a new habitat
30:49without their natural predators.
30:51Whether animals, plants, or bacteria,
30:54they can destroy everything in their wake.
30:57Plant life or the fish life in that new place
30:59will forever be impacted.
31:05The cost of invasive species to the U.S. economy
31:08is estimated at $120 billion each year.
31:12In addition to their economic impact,
31:15they are a direct cause of the decline
31:17of 42% of endangered species.
31:20The industry itself is also invasive.
31:26It applies constant stress on the ocean
31:28and its inhabitants,
31:30who put up with it in silence.
31:32Or almost.
31:34This engine makes a lot of noise.
31:52It's bolted to the hull of a steel ship,
31:56which is like a drum
31:58that's able to transfer that noise
32:00at very, very low frequencies.
32:03If you converted the decibels levels of noise
32:15to the range in which humans live
32:17and compared that with the range
32:19in which mammals live,
32:21in the United States,
32:23I would be required to have hearing protection.
32:27Marine mammals have no hearing protection.
32:37Constantly bombarded with low frequencies,
32:39comparable to 100 times the decibels of a jet engine,
32:41they can't communicate
32:43and are unable to orientate themselves.
32:45Disoriented by the noise
32:47and fleeing from the ordeal,
32:49many of them end up stranded on beaches,
32:51at the cost of their lives.
32:57The acoustic habitat of a humpback whale
33:01has been reduced by 90%.
33:03We're wrecking the ocean acoustically,
33:09with ships.
33:11One third of the cetaceans suffer irreversible hearing damage,
33:27directly resulting from the ship's acoustic pollution.
33:31But nothing can stop the great shipping machine,
33:35nor the engines that keep it going.
33:37Noisy, and particularly voracious engines.
33:41The heart of a ship is its engine.
33:53This engine is the kind of technology
33:56that can burn, can combust,
34:01any kind of fuel that you can think of
34:04that you can make atomized,
34:06from gas to a coal slurry.
34:10I think of it as an omnivore.
34:12It can eat any kind of fuel
34:14that has energy content that can be combusted.
34:21Those omnivores favor quantity over quality.
34:28We are burning 200 tons a day sometimes,
34:31so we cannot think about burning expensive fuel.
34:39We are burning residual fuel oil.
34:48Bunker fuel is twice as cheap as any cleaner fuel.
34:51And if these starving engines couldn't digest it,
34:54it would go straight to the dumping ground.
34:56It is the leftover.
35:00And some people will call this the trash.
35:03This fuel smells terrible.
35:05This fuel has high sulfur.
35:08This fuel has leftover metals.
35:10This fuel has ash, particles, some water.
35:14And this fuel is very, very thick.
35:15The shipping industry has been a natural source of disposing, if you like, of this residual product.
35:27And for many years, frankly, went unnoticed.
35:30Around ten years ago, some academics started to look at the impact of burning this fuel, particularly in coastal regions,
35:42and discovered, of course, that residual bunker fuel had incredibly high levels of sulfur of particulate matter.
35:51And indeed, you know, they were burning fuel at around, on average, 3,000 to 3,500 ppm of sulfur.
36:00That's how it's calculated, parts per million ppm.
36:03Just to give you a comparison, a car in the EU has to, by law, burn sulfur of under 15 ppm.
36:12And indeed, you know, some campaigners began to compare cars with ships.
36:21And the comparison was that one ship was burning the same amount of sulfur as around 50 million cars.
36:28If just one ship emits as much sulfur oxide as 50 million cars,
36:33then the 20 largest vessels pollute more than the billion cars on the planet.
36:39And it's not 20, but 60,000 ships that constantly roam the world's oceans year-round,
36:46spitting their sulfur particles into the atmosphere.
36:50These particles are produced at exactly the right sizes and at very high numbers,
36:56so that they can be breathed easily into our lungs.
37:00And not only be breathed easily into, but they can get deep inside our lungs and they can be deposited.
37:07Fingers are often pointed at the automotive industry first when it comes to air pollution,
37:16while the shipping industry escapes criticism and burns the dirtiest fuel in the world.
37:22Newark is New York City's backyard, a silent and perfectly oiled part in the machine that supplies the metropolis and half of the country.
37:39For those who live near the largest port on the East Coast, ship's pollution is not a scoop, but a palpable reality.
37:49You do have the thickness in the air that comes from the port. You can feel it in your chest. You can feel it in your eyes.
37:56Ever since we came here, I've noticed that I have more colds. There's more post-nasal drip.
38:03I didn't need an asthma pump before. I need an asthma pump almost every day now.
38:09Seeking refuge indoors is a tacit rule all the locals abide by, to escape from ambient toxicity.
38:18The most polluted area is the area immediately surrounding the ports, so you end up with basically hot zones of pollution.
38:26And actually, the effect is made even worse by the fact that trucks and rail cars come to the ports to offload boxes from the ships
38:37and then to deliver them around the United States or around whichever country we're talking about.
38:45Trucks are a ship's best allies. Combined with ships, they make an explosive cocktail.
38:53You have air toxics that can cause cancer. You have fine particulate matter that's basically soot that gets into the lungs and creates asthma, especially in kids and older people.
39:06One out of every four individuals in the community suffers from asthma.
39:20Port areas are at the forefront of a stealthy contamination that knows no frontiers.
39:26The communities that live closest to shipping lanes, in and around ports, are the most heavily impacted.
39:37However, the coastal winds go far inland.
39:41So, many hundreds of kilometers inland, there can still be impacts that are directly attributable to the air pollution of ships, where there can be health impacts.
39:53It's not just limited to those that can see the ships.
40:0160,000 people per year die prematurely from health impacts from shipping around the world.
40:09The population relentlessly inhalers the poison in daily doses.
40:17Victims of an epidemic that claims thousands of lives every year, in the name of world trade.
40:24The International Maritime Organization, a branch of the United Nations, is responsible for regulating the industry.
40:41How is it planning to clean up the fleet?
40:43The impact of new regulations takes some time to achieve its full effect.
40:53Because ships have an economic lifetime of maybe something like 25 to 30 years.
41:00But essentially, improvements and enhancements will apply to new vessels, rather than to the whole fleet at one go.
41:07Because that's simply not possible.
41:17Thirty years.
41:19The average lifespan of a ship.
41:21Ships that end their days in the graveyards of India or Bangladesh.
41:26Where their remains continue to pollute.
41:29Far from the eyes of the Western world.
41:31Thirty years.
41:32A time required to modernize the world fleet and make it less toxic.
41:38Can the planet wait thirty years?
41:4230 years.
42:02Shipping has a carbon footprint equivalent to a country like Germany or Japan.
42:08It is responsible for 4% of the Earth's greenhouse gas emissions.
42:14Four percent is a lot, actually, when you're talking about addressing a challenge as big
42:19as climate change.
42:20Every percentage difference in emissions makes a huge, huge impact on the globe's climatic
42:25stability.
42:29Climate change is a threat for the whole planet.
42:32But it's near the poles that its consequences are more evident.
42:37Every year, the Arctic ice cap loses 37,000 square kilometers of its surface.
42:43That's more than three times the surface of the Bahamas.
42:46As a consequence, new shipping lanes are opening on the east and west of the North Pole.
42:51The ice caps melting to the north of Siberia and Canada translate into a major geopolitical
43:01stake.
43:02It opens new routes in the east and the west, able to cut the distances and the cost of shipping
43:19by three between Maine, Asian and European ports.
43:26By 2050, the ice will be entirely gone.
43:41And these new routes will be practicable all year long.
43:46Which doesn't really bother ship owners.
43:48It's tragic in its irony that we're again creating this loop where we pollute more and put more
43:57heat trapping emissions into the air, accelerate melting, and then, oh look, here's another
44:02opportunity to pollute even more.
44:07Those ships going through there are going to also contribute to the global warming that has
44:15formed the route in the first place, so I suppose it's good news for shippers, but I don't think
44:20it's good news for us.
44:50Nature is very resilient and has proven that she can recover, but there is also times when
44:59we inflict more damage than, you know, nature's resilience can accommodate.
45:09It's really, really deeply urgent that we address pollution from this industry.
45:19Sometimes that's what leadership requires, is pushing the envelope and realizing that you're
45:26not going to be able to please everyone.
45:28And we really need that kind of leadership from the IMO.
45:31But it's hard to be a leader when you're afraid of making anyone angry.
45:38The IMO is slowly taking steps to limit pollution from ships in northern Europe and parts of North
45:43America, but enforcing the regulation is proving problematic for member states.
45:50Who are they?
45:51And what are their interests within this organization?
45:54IMO is funded by its member governments and rather unusually for a United Nations organization.
46:04The amount of funding that each country puts in is decided according to the size of the national
46:11fleet for that country.
46:13So for example, the highest contributor to the IMO budget is Panama and that's followed by Liberia
46:18and the Marshall Islands because they currently have the largest national fleets in world shipping.
46:27The same countries that sell their nationality to the less scrupulous shipping companies are
46:32the hidden side of the IMO.
46:35They fund the organization and make sure that no new regulation will come to disrupt their business.
46:41The same flags of convenience business that is the source of all the abuses in the industry,
46:48that enables unscrupulous ship owners to act in complete anonymity, that encourages tax evasion,
46:55that allows the exploitation of seafarers, and that contaminates the planet.
47:08The enormity of the fleet makes shipping a highly polluting activity, but it's still our best bet.
47:15If we use planes instead of ships to transport the same amount of cargo, the financial and
47:21environmental cost would be much higher.
47:25Shipping is still by far the most efficient means of transporting goods.
47:30We shouldn't forget that.
47:32It's a huge asset and we all need shipping and we all rely upon ships to transport our ever-increasing
47:40demands.
47:47There are things we can all do, an industry in particular can do profitably, reduce carbon
47:53and make money.
47:57If profitability is the priority for ship owners, money can be a key argument for improving
48:02the energy efficiency of their vessels.
48:07With a relatively small investment, they can increase engine performance, improve the quality
48:12of the hull, or use other innovations, such as the wind.
48:17The result would be 30-40% saving on fuel, more profitability for ship owners, and less pollution.
48:26A win-win solution would be to raise awareness among shipping companies that for the industry
48:31to be profitable, it has to become more sustainable.
48:39However, this industry exists because it supplies goods to consumers.
48:48So consumers should also open their eyes to these matters.
48:53The embedded energy use and embedded pollution in all that we wear and all that we use needs
49:00to be accounted for.
49:03But the first thing that needs to happen in order for us to address it, though, is for people
49:07to know about it.
49:12Information is key to triggering change.
49:15Can we imagine a world of transparency, where the traceability of the products we buy could
49:20be easily available?
49:25I absolutely would love to be able to walk into a store and on the tag, it gives me every
49:31piece of information about where that piece of clothing has been, where it's traveled to,
49:35how many miles it's traveled.
49:42I think that we have the technology and the resources to make that happen.
49:47You know, the companies that we buy products from, it's their responsibility to give us that
49:51information.
49:55And I hope, sooner rather than later, that that's something that is available to consumers.
50:04Could a simple tag contribute to change consumer habits?
50:16Maybe one day this can help inspire some manufacturers and encourage the whole system to change direction
50:23and steer towards a more conscientious model of society.
50:33The biggest ships in the ocean, when they're underway, take a very long time to turn around,
50:39to change course.
50:40So if you reckon that the ships are changing course even a little bit, it can be considered
50:47to be the start of a very big change in the future course on a long voyage through the
50:53next century.
50:55A long voyage ahead, which hopefully will see this industry emerging from the darkness and
51:04openly show its face.
51:11Policy makers and institutions should be a part of this journey and take a firm stand to
51:15reform this industry and guide it towards better practices.
51:20So that shipping becomes a true driver of growth that does not leave anybody on the wayside.
51:34Have a great day.
51:43Thanks for listening.
51:51Bye.
51:53Bye.
51:56Bye.
51:58Bye.
52:00Bye.
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52:02Bye.
52:02Bye.
52:02Bye.
52:03Bye.
52:03Bye.
52:03Bye.
52:03Bye.
52:04Bye.
52:04Bye.
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