Ship Owners Forum: Meeting Corporate Social Responsibilities

“More than compliance - sharing responsibility”

Peter M Swift, Managing Director, INTERTANKO

A frequently asked question within the shipping community is: "What are shipowners responsible for besides making money?". This implies an expectation that owners/managers have a duty of responsibility that is greater than merely providing immediate stakeholders with a service defined within contractual obligations and limitations. In other words, there is an expectation that their responsibilities must be more than doing the "bare minimum"!

Within tanker shipping, as with other shipping sectors, one of the key challenges is routinely cited as "meeting society's expectations", and this is frequently coupled with the realisation that those expectations will be ever increasing in terms of shipping's performance. Thus:

  • The realisation that the expectation level is now routinely set at "Performance beyond compliance" – examples being the realisation that the ISM Code frequently establishes at best a minimum standard, and the regular questioning of acceptable minimum safe manning levels and the like;
  • Many leading shipping companies and managers are also committed to "continuous improvement", i.e. an acknowledgement of a responsibility to review, analyse and have in place ongoing programmes of improvement for all of the companies' actions and activities.

This latter theme is taken up in INTERTANKO's "Poseidon Challenge", which is an invitation to all participants in the Chain of Responsibility to commit to:

  • Working together with all the other relevant sectors
  • Continuous improvement within the sector, with tangible measures to achieve their specified goals.

What then is the business environment that permits this wider responsibility to flourish?

Without doubt there is a need for markets to be generating a fair reward for the service provided, and most importantly for this to be founded on a degree of certainty with respect to the future as well as to the present – which has often not been the case in the past. There is also the need for legal certainty/stability – which again is not always present.

While there exists an onus on owners and others, when also accepting the principles of sustainable development, to deliver both service and performance beyond mere compliance, owners and managers are equally entitled to reasonably expect that governments will similarly deliver their share of the bargain. This requires regulators and legislators to recognise the importance of a "shared responsibility" for safe, secure, reliable and environmentally-sound marine transportation. In turn this entails governments facilitating the legislative and, as appropriate, commercial business environment (including when relevant supportive fiscal measures). Where regulations are required these should be effective, i.e. fit for purpose, properly considered in consultation with the appropriate stakeholders and, if implemented, should be uniformly and fairly applied and consistent with other legislative measures such as international law and treaty obligations. At the same time governments should recognise that the industry is capable of a high degree of self regulation and routinely adopts industry best practices as its "norms" in a very effective manner. A programme, for example, that continues as owners develop a raft of new measures to tackle several of the key environmental challenges that face the industry – spanning from the regulating of air emissions at sea and in port to management of ship-generated waste, to name just a couple.

Governments have a responsibility to encourage and to incentivise and simultaneously not disincentivise responsible owners or others. They should demonstrate their support for the "good" not merely seek to punish the "bad". Obviously it is in all our interests to weed out the rotten apples and to speak out – without hesitation – on malpractices, the substandard, etc., but "bad" legislation is the enemy of the "good".

A particular concern for many in our industry is the numerous examples of the unfair treatment of seafarers and others, ranging from their unlawful detention after a shipping accident to the denial of shore leave, access to the terminal and much more. Additionally, tanker owners, in particular, but joined by many others, have consistently expressed their specific concern with the increasing trend to criminalise unjustifiably those involved in any event where pollution occurs. While they fully support the investigation and, if appropriate, the prosecution of illegal discharges of oil from ships, they strongly object to criminalising accidental oil pollution and to treating seafarers as criminals. Further they firmly believe that any criminal offence of pollution from a ship must be clearly defined and in accordance with international law, and that any penalties imposed on someone found guilty of such an offence must be proportionate.

There is also growing acknowledgement that measures designed to "criminalise" the rogue few have in practice the unintentional effect of being counterproductive and hitting hardest the responsible elements of the industry - a classic example of the downside of governments failing to engage in adequate and proper consultation before introducing legislative measures.

How then are "responsibilities" shared between the regulator and the regulated?

Firstly it requires dialogue – both sides talking to each other AND respecting each other's views. Secondly it requires both sides to recognise that they have responsibilities to ensure that society's expectations for safe, clean and reliable shipping are met:

- owners by acting "beyond compliance" (a responsible industry will get the respect it deserves!), and

- governments by acknowledging their responsibility to encourage and, if appropriate, reward good owners, by ensuring that any measures targeted at the substandard do not have a detrimental effect on the others.

This "sharing of responsibility" will help all to deliver on their respective responsibilities to society at large.