News Content

Pro-bureaucrat GSF again favours compulsory carbon credit trading

THE Global Shippers Forum (GSF), which often as not backs the regulator over the shipper it purports to represent, has renewed its campaign against global warming that favours mandatory carbon credit trading.

"We support addressing carbon reduction via operational and fuel efficiency measures first and then using a global market-based measure (GMBM) based on carbon offsetting," said GSF climate change policy advisor Rachael Dillon, renewing the group's call for action raised last December.

"Market based" refers to carbon credit trading schemes once mandated by the European Union until it bowed to pressure from the aviation community, which resisted the imposition of new costs and the risk of hefty fines for non-participation.

"The aviation sector must agree a global deal to tackle climate change," saids the GSF's new Aviation Emissions Policy Statement.

This refers to a meeting in Montreal this month of the UN's International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which took on the job of devising a global policy to replace the threat of a widely opposed EU carbon credit trading scheme demanding European taxes be paid for carbon emissions over non-EU territory.

The GSF has often taken positions, which other shipper groups oppose. In the container mandatory weigh-in controversy, GSF joined the debate not on the shippers side who wanted none of it, but took a side in a petty side dispute over which weigh-in system to favour, derailing any attempt to discuss whether weigh-ins should be mandated at all.

GSF has had well publicised disagreements with the European Shippers Council and Asian Shippers' Council, which together formed a rival group called the Global Shippers Alliance.

The Asian Shippers Council (ASC) quit the Global Shippers Forum because of membership rules that would have diluted its vote by allowing smaller regional councils, which it formerly represented, to join as full members.

That left the ASC free to join the European Shippers Council (ESC) in its opposition to mandatory container weigh-ins before loading because of the costs, red tape and lack of clarity over liability.

Shippers, said the GSF, are under increasing pressure, without specifying whence the pressure comes, to be able to report on the carbon intensity of their supply chains including transport.

Support for such measures come from the bureaucracy of national and international organisations, that form the larger regulatory community.

It was originally expected that the compulsory carbon credit trading would begin from 2021 "but instead a voluntary phase will be put in place until 2027 when the obligations become mandatory", said the GSF.

Incorporated in June 2011, the GSF is outgrowth of the Tripartite Shippers' Group (TSG), of which the European Shipper Council and the Asian Shippers Council were once a member, but no longer.

The GSF works closely with United Nations agencies. In fact, its website concedes: "The decision to incorporate was taken to enable the GSF to establish formal recognition, consultation status and accreditation with the major UN agencies such as the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Customs Organisation."