Country delegates at the UN agency responsible for global shipping voted on Tuesday to avoid any meaningful intervention in the sector and continue to operate largely outside of any enforceable international law or external scrutiny, in spite of safer, cleaner and efficient technologies being available. It is not just continued operational inefficiencies that result of this lack of regulation, as major oil spills in Mauritius, Venezuela and Russia occurred this year. Many deaths at sea have also occurred alongside shipping related disasters such as the exploding oil supertanker off the coast of Sri Lanka and dangerous cargo exploding in the Port of Beirut. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of seafarers are stranded at sea in violation of labor laws while the COVID-19 restrictions continue.
President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris pledged to support ‘enforceable emissions agreements in international shipping’, and the influence this change in tack from the United States may have on the regulation and enforcement of more stringent standards in the international shipping sector has yet to be seen.
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