A new report from the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) urges governments to learn lessons about the maritime supply chains stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.
In “Opportunities for Seafarers and National Maritime Policies: Navigating beyond the chaos of the pandemic,” the ITF said crucial lessons from the COVID-19 crisis present sensible ways for governments to secure global supply chains.
“During the pandemic, in many countries, consumers and businesses experienced shortages, including of critical goods like medicines and fuel supplies,” said Chris Given, Secretary–Treasurer of the Seafarers’ International Union of Canada (SIU Canada), one of the report’s authors. “But what we see is that in other countries, specifically those with robust national maritime policies, governments were able to harness well-laid policy levers to get their people fed, fueled, and on a quicker path back to economic and health recovery.”
The chaos of the pandemic left shipping containers far from where they needed to be and up to 400,000 seafarers trapped aboard vessels because of pandemic restrictions, the report said. Record-high shipping prices and port congestion helped lead to shortages of finished goods and left consumers at the mercy of supply chains.
“Amidst the chaos, some countries were able to use national flag fleets to shift critical cargo and get supply chains moving again. We have to remember that these are supply chains that remained logjammed elsewhere,” Given said. “In writing this report, we asked ‘Why?’, ‘What was different about some countries that saw them come through faster and stronger, while others were very negatively exposed by these crises?”
The report said that while some countries, like Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, South Africa, the UK, and the United States, had learned lessons from the pandemic, others needed to follow suit to avoid unnecessary risk.
“Covid-19 and the supply chain shocks which followed laid bare just how fragile our global supply chains are,” David Heindel, ITF Seafarers’ section chair and president of the Seafarers International Union of North America (SIU), said. “Sensible national maritime policies are an important insurance to safeguard a country’s economic, health, security, and environmental interests. After what the world has been through, what kind of government wouldn’t want that insurance for their people?”