Held in Tokyo on 17 and 18 October 2013.
The Tripartite meeting unanimously welcomed the IMO theme for 2013 of ‘a sustainable maritime transport system’ and its recognition of the three pillars of sustainability; environmental, social and economic.
Furthermore, the Tripartite meeting emphasised that safety was the paramount objective of ship construction, classification and operation and in this regard agreed that safety was a key principle that underpinned each of the sustainability pillars.
In this context, the Tripartite partners looked forward to an opportunity to emphasise the balanced inter-relationship between safety and the sustainability pillars and to work toward a regulatory process that requires an initial impact assessment at the earliest stages of development of a new regulation, to assess its potential consequences and benefits on safety, the environment, and economic and social issues.
BIMCO President John Denholm chaired this meeting in Tokyo and subsequently stated: “It was a great honour to chair the annual Tripartite meeting in Tokyo this year. It was a very engaging couple of days with a full agenda and lots of debate. It was particularly pleasing to see the commonality of views across the shipping industry as a whole and support for the work that the IMO does on our behalf”.
Source: ICS
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The three Pillars of Sustainability Sustainable development as understood by the UN is madeup of three components or ‘pillars’:environmental,social andeconomic which are all inextricably linked. Maintenance of the shipping industry’s economicsustainability is also important given its vital role intransporting around 90% of world trade, upon whichthe functioning of the world economy, and its furtherdevelopment, depends.Between now and 2025, the shipping industry expects toinvest hundreds of billions of dollars in delivering furtherenvironmental improvements. This is to comply with a rangeof new environmental standards recently adopted by IMO.These new IMO standards are supported by ICS on theunderstanding that they will be properly enforced on a globalbasis in order to maintain fair competition and the levelplaying field which shipping requires to operate efficiently. The shipping industry, as represented by ICS, is committedto the continuous improvement of its environmentalperformance within the successful framework provided by theIMO MARPOL Convention and other IMO instruments. Forexample, although operations at sea involve a high degree ofphysical risk, the number of major oil spills caused by shippingreduced dramatically during the last decade. This was due toa combination of improved industry best practices and thesuccessful global enforcement of IMO rules. |
Find more information on Safety4Sea Article – ICS Calls for Sustainable Environmental Legislation
