Lloyds List 19 June 2013
Impetus for reform is building as UN body seeks to better serve industry’s needs
WHEN Birgit Liodden, secretary-general of Youngship International, played a rap song at last week’s International Maritime Organization safety summit and called on the organisation to stop presenting itself as an old greybeard, she pressed a nerve for many present.
Meetings of the IMO and its secretariat are often seen to be full of middle-aged “experts”, most of them men, who fear change and create bureaucracy almost for the sake of it.
However, the committee meetings at London’s Albert Embankment face another problem of perception, too.
Changes to the shipping industry have made it a less attractive career choice. As a result of this — and of the politicising of the environmental debate — sea-experienced greybeards and naval architects are being replaced by bureaucrats who have little understanding of how a ship and its crew function.
As a UN body, the IMO is bound to a certain way of working by consensus, but from the point of view of the shipowner, that can create unworkable and hard-to-implement legislation.
Regulations may be written with the best intentions, but sometimes they impede the role of shipping, which is to facilitate international business and trade.
The IMO’s various conventions and other mandatory rules place some 600 administrative burdens on a single stakeholder; some have direct implications for ship operations, the master’s workload and even for ships’ officers on shore.
IMO conventions were written with the intention that member states would implement them into national legislation, then enforce them through their flag and port state functions.
However, change is afoot, and the light is shining from different parts of the IMO.
One is the organisation’s obvious multimedia presence, with an IMO member of staff more active on Twitter than many shipowners or trade journalists responding daily to requests and tweeted comments.
Also, Koji Sekimizu is blogging about his activities around the world representing shipping and the IMO, in what must be a first for an IMO secretary-general.
Other signs in recent years suggest that the impetus for change is building, whether that is due to the lack of funds being gathered from IMO members or to a growing desire for the organisation to modernise.
The event at the IMO at which Ms Liodden played her rap video was the recent symposium on future ship safety.
Although that might sound like the typical knee-jerk consultation event that follows a major casualty such as that of Costa Concordi a, Mr Sekimizu said the event had been scheduled to take place in 2012 but that he decided not to go ahead then, for fear of influencing decisions that might emerge from the investigation.
From the outset, Mr Sekimizu has suggested this event might be a precursor to rewriting the Safety of Life at Sea Convention.
Another major clue to a changing IMO mindset has been around for a number of years, in developing goal-based standards that will take prescriptive legislation out of the hands of the IMO and into the industry — probably to class societies, who see this strengthening their position in shipping.
The IMO is also streamlining its sub-committees, merging some to reduce the workload, both for the secretariat and for members who must fly across to the world to the London-based headquarters.
Now, it has begun to look at how to cut red tape out of shipping.
It is scrutinising regulations and rules within shipping and cutting away at the bureaucratic administration that is seen to be at least partly responsible for the excess paperwork.
The overhaul of the administrative burdens on IMO stakeholders is supervised by Kees Polderman, former chair of the IMO navigation committee. The job, he says, is to look at the 600 legislative burdens imposed on industry stakeholders to see where they can change.
Mr Polderman is adamant that there is a changing mindset within the IMO, on the part of both the secretariat and the members of national delegations that come to its meetings.
Having been involved in the IMO for 25 years Mr Polderman says he has seen a shift from writing prescriptive, nuts-and-bolts regulations that all too often reacted to a particular incident to an approach in which experts try to identify risks and set goal-based standards for shipping to strive to achieve.
To achieve this change, the IMO wants everyone affected by its legislation to take part in an online consultation through the organisation’s website. Once the consultation ends in October, Mr Polderman’s working group will analyse the results and report back, probably late next year.
He has urged shipowners, managers, crews, surveyors, class societies and anyone else to respond candidly.
“We want to identify the rules that are obsolete,” he said. “They can then be put forward to be rewritten within the IMO’s main committees.
“We cannot change the world in one go, but we can change the mindsets and work for better regulation and smarter policies.”
He cites the response to the Costa Concordia casualty where, rather than rushing to conclusions and issuing knee-jerk changes to the rules, the IMO decided to wait for a full investigation report before assessing what risks the case had identified.
IMO supporters hope that this thoughtful approach to rule making will shape the approaches taken by the marine environment protection committee, which critics say has become highly political.
Environmental regulations tend to be political in nature, often involving local action and vocal lobby groups and being addressed at national level before pressure escalates to push the debate to an international level.
Shipowners’ associations, through their lobby organisation the International Chamber of Shipping, have recently complained about a lack of consideration over how shipping will have to change as a result of environmental rule making.
The chamber highlighted how regulations such as the ballast water convention are written with the end goal in sight, but give little thought to how owners will have to adapt to meet the new requirements.
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IMO committee meetings face a problem of perception. The recent Symposium on Future Ship Safety (below) might sound like the typical knee-jerk consultation event that follows a major casualty such as that of Costa Concordi a (above), but did not go ahead as planned in 2012 for fear of influencing decisions that might emerge from the investigation.
The IMO is growing its multimedia presence. Secretary-general Koji Sekimizu (left) is blogging about his activities around the world representing shipping and the IMO, in what must be a first for the organization.
A fresh mindset is building at the IMO as the organisation seeks to dispel the notion that it fears change and creates bureaucracy almost for the sake of it.
Birgit Liodden, secretary-general of Youngship International, called on the organisation to stop presenting itself as an old greybeard.
The IMO is growing its multimedia presence. Secretary-general Koji Sekimizu (left) is blogging about his activities around the world representing shipping and the IMO, in what must be a first for the organization.
