Montreal is hosting the global ‘Shaping the Future of Shipping’ conference (2024)

According to the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), approximately 80 per cent of the goods that are vital to our quality of life, including cars, clothing, food and more, are transported by ship. Canada also exports many of its goods through marine shipping such as salt, grains, fuel and minerals.

In 2022 alone, marine shipping on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada generated $66.1 billion in economic activity throughout North America.

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“Canada obviously is an exporter, as well as an importer of fuels, and they travel through the Middle East and through the Gulf, all over the world,” says Emanuele Grimaldi, chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping. “Whilst we often think locally, the shipping industry is very much global, and impacts everyone locally and globally.”

Clearly, shipping is vital to supporting the economy and meeting the needs of consumers, and the industry is looking ahead to meeting a number of anticipated challenges head on to ensure marine shipping remains the most efficient and sustainable means of moving what matters. As part of that, the Chamber of Marine Commerce (CMC) and ICS are co-hosting a global summit in Montreal on June 13. The event will have representatives from almost 40 countries in attendance and will discuss issues and advancements in the industry, including the use of alternative fuels, measures to make supply chains more resilient against surprises and shocks, and efforts to encourage greater trade between countries.

Recently, the industry has faced many new obstacles and uncertainties related to climate change, barriers to international trade and geopolitical conflicts. With black swan events such as the Russia/Ukraine war affecting shipping in the Black Sea and the Houthis compromising ships going through the Suez Canal in the Red Sea, the shipping industry needs to ensure trade is resilient against these and other serious challenges.

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“We’re going to use this summer to kick off the next phase of global shipping discussions, which is really all going to be about building resiliency and how to better deal with the growing uncertainty and challenges that we’re seeing,” says Bruce Burrows, president and CEO of the CMC. “This discussion in Montreal will be a great opportunity to bring a global perspective to all these challenges facing not just shipping but trading globally — we have emerging geopolitical risks, along with cybersecurity challenges and the integration of AI.”

Among the many topics being discussed, one important one will be protectionism and ensuring free trade between countries. The concern is that individual countries will impose tariffs on ships coming into their country, which will drive up prices for consumers around the world. For example, the United States is talking about imposing fees on the movements of ships that were made in China, which could significantly impact the price of goods worldwide.

“The global shipping industry trades on the basis of open and fair trading where one country does not pit itself against the other to disrupt the flow of goods,” Burrows says. “So any potential unilateral action by one jurisdiction is very problematic.”

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Another critical topic at the conference will be sustainability. Marine shipping is already one of the greenest modes of transportation since it’s more fuel-efficient than airplanes, trains and trucks. However, a major goal of the industry is to keep making changes to reach its goal of becoming net zero by 2050.

Grimaldi and Burrows both explain that one key initiative the shipping industry is proposing to governments to reach this goal is charging ships fees based on the amount of fuel they consume. This money is then put into a pot to fund research on clean energy that could be used in the shipping industry going forward. This is a worldwide proposal that has the benefit of avoiding any need of unilateral trade tariffs being imposed.

“That money would then reward ship owners that are using zero-emission fuels because the price differential is so high at the moment, so it overcomes that price barrier,” Grimaldi says. “It will also create an awful lot of money available for developing economies to build their port infrastructure and their fuel infrastructure.”

Burrows says that when tackling the various challenges and uncertainty in the shipping industry, it’s important to outline the uncertainties and bring stakeholders together to discuss solutions — precisely what will be happening at the summit in Montreal.

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“We can all very easily become very caught up in our own worlds, but at the summit everyone comes and brings different perspective and that’s really important,” Grimaldi says. “The perspective from China is going to be different from the perspective from North America, the perspective from Europe is different from Africa, and that’s important because as a global industry, we have to have a global solution.”

To learn more about the global summit on shipping taking place in June, visit https://marinedelivers.com/shippingsummit.

This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of the Chamber of Marine Commerce.

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