The global container freight industry needs greater attention today. Nations including South Korea and the United States have a responsibility to maintain and enhance infrastructure for the flow of commerce. Preserving habitats and stewardship of nature’s critical maritime resources are also at stake. The status quo is one of multiplicity in possible systems, lack of integration, and too much concentration, all at the same time.
The recent accident in Baltimore with the container ship Dali again brings to the attention of the masses and specialists alike the various challenges and opportunities faced. With a single freight container’s payload holding the potential to upset global supply chains, there is ample salience to do something about the world’s growing interdependence. Threats to global shipping also require attention. It’s much more than about “piracy” and the Houthis’ moment.
Reading a wide variety of commentary about the Dali documents several of the challenges: the growing use of freight container ships and barges clogs ports designed for much less traffic. Bridge and sea route lanes and other infrastructures also were designed and built decades ago and require major investments for the scale and extent of traffic. The lack of competition in many agreements among freight/shipping companies discourages efficiency and optimization. There is no sign of cooperation among the world’s power blocs on the need to create a neutral shipping architecture that is free and open to all.
According to Shabayo and Von Hassel in a 2019 Journal of Shipping and Trade article, the barge traffic and freight container monolith ships deserve greater priority in terms of port pegging orders. Large barges need more locating devices, fail safes and monitors for passing near other structures such as bridges. It’s inexcusable that the Dali ran into a bridge. The regulations for crews, numbers of personnel, controls for errors in piloting, and means of stopping vessels are underdone. It’s more the lone sentinel and the lighthouse model.
Too many structures don’t suit the traffic of today. Cities and ports of the 19th and 20th centuries can’t continue to do that job today and tomorrow. Clinging to them incurs unnecessary costs and accepts unnecessary hazards, blockages, delays and dangers. Of course, it’s not a small thing at all to “change ports of call.” It’s not a matter of a simple “retrofit.” However, urban planners and local, state, provincial, and national authorities arguably haven’t begun to take the problem and the possibilities its challenges present seriously. This mitigates in favor of creating an international system for sea transit and shipping. We do have the outlines of such a system in the skies. It’s time to create a system for the seas.
Global shipping runs on fuels that damage the environment and increase carbon emissions. A March 2022 report from the Environmental Defense Fund (www.edf.org) estimates that the cost of emissions at present will run to $25 billion per year as this century progresses. Action is needed to make shipping transport a model for transport generally and to model the impacts of transportation on localities, the seas, and the environment.
There’s way too much concentration in the industry. According to reports from the United Nations Council on Trade and Development, beyond economies of scale, agreements, and consortia control over two-thirds of trade in particular corridors, with many more corridors showing lesser but still too much concentration. This creates potential abuses of trade. There should be an examination of barriers to entry and the development of greater balance in shipping providers, as well as diversity. Creating an international shipping system shouldn’t be code for a monopoly by great powers or their alliances.
Several years ago, the late Park Chang-seok and my mentor, Dr. Park Eung-kyuk, Professor Emeritus of Hanyang University and former director of the Korea Institute of Public University, wrote a book entitled Korean Maritime Sovereignty, for which I prepared an epilogue. In it, I noted the opinion about the seas as a shared universal resource. The roots of many contemporary international conflicts lie in the growing importance of our oceans, seas and other shared bodies of water as routes for commercial and military vessels. Combined with the world’s territorial mindset stuck in nationalism, a perfect storm of conflict, instability and inefficiencies is on deck.
We need new technology and a new mindset for building truly global hubs of navigation and commerce. The present system tends to monopolistic and oligopolistic concentrations of nations and firms. This overdependence on the few will only create challenges in the long run and shortages when conflicts and disasters occur. I’m afraid the degree of conflict that has emerged between China and the United States, aided and abetted by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, casts a skeptical lens on its likelihood. However, East Asian partners with the United States should look to develop 22nd-century architecture for seaports, sea lanes and transit routes.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and academic services and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
Need for global shipping system
22
0
08.04.2024
The global container freight industry needs greater attention today. Nations including South Korea and the United States have a responsibility to maintain and enhance infrastructure for the flow of commerce. Preserving habitats and stewardship of nature’s critical maritime resources are also at stake. The status quo is one of multiplicity in possible systems, lack of integration, and too much concentration, all at the same time.
The recent accident in Baltimore with the container ship Dali again brings to the attention of the masses and specialists alike the various challenges and opportunities faced. With a single freight container’s payload holding the potential to upset global supply chains, there is ample salience to do something about the world’s growing interdependence. Threats to global shipping also require attention. It’s much more than about “piracy” and the Houthis’ moment.
Reading a wide variety of commentary about the Dali documents several of the challenges: the growing use of freight container ships and barges clogs ports designed for much less traffic. Bridge and sea route lanes and other infrastructures also were designed and built decades ago and require major investments for the scale and extent of traffic. The lack of competition in many agreements among freight/shipping companies discourages efficiency and........
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