Pettersson speech at 28 BSPC

The 28th Baltic Sea Parliamentary ConferenceOslo, Norway, 25 – 27 August 2019Clean Oceans & the Future of Working LifeChallenges and VisionsMonday, 26 AugustTHIRD SESSIONSafeguarding the oceans – Achieving the 2030 UNSustainable Development GoalsMr Jörgen Pettersson, MP,BSPC Rapporteur on Integrated PolicyCheck against delivery. Only the speech as given has any validity.Shipping make the world go around. Thanks to dedicated shipowners and brave and professional seafarers we are able to buy cars that has been manufactured in Japan and cellphones produced in China. We can eat fresh bananas every day, if we so choose, and healthy vegetables wherever we might be in the world. Thanks to the people and the vessels in the offshore-industry Norway is a wealthy country and with the help of sophisticated maritime infrastructure you can travel wherever you want at a reasonable cost. Shipping is life and our oceans are something that connects us all and make our world smaller and in fact better. Trade is life and without ships there would be no trade.The purpose of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference is to make the Baltic Sea Region a role model for the rest of the world when it comes to ecological and economical standards and quite a few other areas. That is brave and inspiring and something we all should aim at: to become a little bit better every day. As parliamentarians we are able to change policies, BSPC is the thinktank that can make governments act. In shipping we have succeeded. Not only BSPC but together with other policymakers such as International Maritime Organization and other international bodies the Baltic Sea today can be described as a small sea with great ambitions.In this report on developments in Integrated Maritime Policy you will for example learn more about blue biotechnology, how the vision amongst the scientists are aiming to become reality amongst sailors. It has not been printed but you will find it on the website and it will change the way you look at maritime businesses. Europe make difference. Roughly 90 % of world trade is carried by ships. 76 % of the EU’s external trade is shipped by sea, and European shipowners control 40 % of the world’s fleet.In our work we have taken part in numerous conferences and meetings where the shipping industry identifies challenges in order to change to the better. The shipping companies have historically lived a life far from transparency, what happened at sea stayed at sea. That is not the case nowadays. Stronger regulations have improved the transparency and also pushed the development into a greener and more sustainable future. In the report thera are more to read about the bold initiative from IMO which will reduce the emissions from shipping dramatically, despite the fact that the goods transported will increase worldwide. The decision from IMO means that the Green House Gases from shipping should peak as soon as possible and to reduce the total annual GHG emissions by at least 50 % by 2050 compared to 2008, while, at the same time, pursuing efforts towards phasing them out entirely.Highlighted areas which we have highlighted in our report are also gender equality, safety, sustainability, automation, digitalization, sulphur cap, blue growth and marine litter. All of that will change the reality in shipping to the better. We see for real what we have dreamt of in many years. The IT-generation meets the old school shipping industry and miracle will take place. We are there today and the use of dirty fuel is soon to be old and the future brighter. There are still a long way to go but in shipping the first and most important steps have been taken.The Baltic Sea Region (BSR) is a vital part of the global maritime industry. Since 2015, the Baltic became a part of the Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA), where only low-sulphur fuel or scrubbers are allowed. In 2020, the rest of the world will follow, which puts the operators in the Baltic Sea in a good position in terms of technical knowledge. The cluster is vital for the economic and social development in the BSR and the rest of the world. The Baltic Sea Region have together with the North Sea been the role model we so dearly would like it to be. We are not perfect, very few are, but as long we are a little bit better than the rest of the world it is good enough!Finally let me express my sincere thanks to my collegue as Maritime Rapporteur Jochen Schulte and our Secretary Ms. Carmen Holhlfeld from the Landtag Mecklenburg-Vorpommern who in a professional manner have structured loads of information into a comprehensive and instructive report. I started with stating that shipping makes the world go around. By reading this report I assure you that your understanding of the maritime world will be deeper and that you will look at ships at sea with greater respect in the future. They might be carrying you next mobile, computer or your fresh bananas.