NGO's Shipping and an organisation turning 250 years old

Dr Anne-Marie Warris' blog today is also an audio blog as she called us from outside of the Bella Centre last night to update us on the latest COP 15 happenings. Here is the audio file to listen to or download and below is the transcript of her phone in.
Just before this was uploaded, Anne-Marie called back to say,

The mood has definitely changed over the course of today, with optimism on both funding and the possibility of a deal being done creeping back into people's thoughts. The early rumours that I referred to about Obama possibly not coming appear to have been untrue.

NGO's Shipping and an organisation turning 250 years old

Dr Anne-Marie Warris

Good morning from a snowy Copenhagen, an unsurprising look here in Copenhagen. This is Dr Anne-Marie Warris on Friday, 18 December, what is meant to be the last day of this long climate change negotiation, although most of us don’t believe that will be the case.

Today I would like to cover five specific points. So what’s it like in Copenhagen and at the Bella Centre? Well, the mood has definitely turned sombre. The news overnight that China is no longer clear that it will be an agreement and much more likely to be a political news and that Barack Obama may not turn up. By the time you listen to this we will probably know whether he did or didn’t. So we are very much worrying about what it might look like and although we are all hoping for the best, we are all getting ready for perhaps a slightly more depressed mood than I indicated in my first blog well over two months ago.

As my second point I would like to come back to the issue of shipping and maritime emissions. Since Friday last week we’ve had an unending row of rumours about what may or may not be happening. We had the TV news earlier this week that Connie Hedegaard then the President of the COP 15 had indicated that she’d expected a levy on ship to come out of the high level segment. But when you talk in the corridors with people this looks increasingly unlikely and it’s much more likely that the text that’s currently being negotiated will hand the responsibility back to the IMO will deal with the CBDR, Common But Differentiated Responsibility and capabilities as well as IMO’s equal treatment for all ships will hold. But it will depend on the point I made in point number one, will we get a deal or not.

If we don’t get a deal in Copenhagen the question I suppose on everybody’s mind is “what will that mean for maritime industry?” It’s worth remembering a couple of serious facts here before we get carried away about what this does or doesn’t mean. The first point, the IMO MEPC will continue according to the plan it agreed at MEPC59 in July this year. The Kyoto protocol still applies, it hasn’t gone away, and we are likely to see an increasing number of regional schemes. We already know that the EU is likely to take action if nothing comes out of Copenhagen. Sometimes I suspect they’ve already got a scheme in a bottom drawer and we know that the United States as part of the Waxman-Markey and also the beginning of the newly emerging bill at the Senate, the one that’s replacing the Kerry-Boxer has got maritime emissions both on domestic and international bunker fuels as well as marine engine efficiency on the list. And we are also likely to see an increased pressure from stakeholders in terms of supply chain issues and in terms of what people are expecting from shipping.

So, the climate change issues for shipping will not go away and in fact it will come back when we get another deal because we will be back in another city to negotiate again. As my point C, I’d actually want to look at other issues, issues beyond the shipping industry because in reality this is not just about the shipping industry it’s about business in general. I must admit I’ve been very concerned whilst being here both about Yvo de Boer’s comment at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development day on Friday last week about wanting more engagement from business and wanting to see more from business. And also the fact that you listen to a number of side events and talks in the corridors, a number of NGO’s are really blaming business NGO’s for the problem we are in as if we as the human race would prefer to blame somebody else for the issues we are in. It did so remind me about W Ian Hamilton’s blog earlier this week about we deal with the conflicts and also how we deal with trying to pass responsibility on.

So, we need business engagement but we are all trying to stay positive here. It was interesting talking to the business NGO’s at one of the meetings yesterday morning to see where we are and what’s happening. We are all really trying to be committed, we are all really trying to be committed, and we are all really trying to do things. It was also very visible at the reception on Wednesday night at Maersk where we were talking about what shipping might do in this industry. So we are all trying to stay positive despite the news you read in press and we are all hoping for something that will come out of here. But we are not as hopeful as we were two weeks ago.

So my fifth and final point is about Lloyd’s Register. What are we doing about this and what is our mission and vision? Well first of all, we have to remember we are nearly 250 years old and our mission is to protect us, the human race, life and environment at sea and on land. We will continue to work with that as our new environmental policy makes absolutely clear in terms of influencing and developing relationships with stakeholders and regulators. We will continue to monitor and support our clients and interested parties that are relevant to our clients to try and understand what the climate change issues may mean for the supply chain and for ourselves.