Katrina Abhold, Senior Project Manager, Decarbonisation at Global Maritime Forum, on Wednesday (15 May) shared an article on her social media cautioning that recent flurry of greenwashing allegations have led to rising concerns within the maritime industry and those active in green shipping corridors. 

She said the greenwashing claims can act as a double-edged sword, both dissuading companies from making public commitments but also helping to improve transparency in an area not well known: 

Climate litigation. On the face of it, these two words together seem to show just how far we’ve come as a society in our quest to save the planet from our own follies. Now, in conjunction with fighting great social injustices like gender and race discrimination, progressive countries have allowed their judiciary systems to take on environmental injustices as well.

Make no mistake, however; such climate-related lawsuits are not a new turn of events. I dare say that Erin Brockovich herself would take offense to such a claim. For decades environmental groups and organizations like Greenpeace have waged legal battles in multiple countries to defend and protect our Earth’s biodiverse ecosystems. What’s new is that these lawsuits are moving away from allegations focusing on activities that pollute or disturb environmental areas — think dumping waste into oceans or emitting toxic chemicals into the air — towards allegations of inactivity where companies and governments fail to uphold their sustainability commitments.

To this end, the past few months have seen a series of triumphant headlines boasting various courts cracking down on “greenwashing”, wherein a business claims that its product or services are better or less harmful for the environment than they really are or omits key information about their environmental impact.

In January, the European Parliament passed a new so-called “Green Claims Directive” that requires companies to provide evidence for any voluntary green claims they make in consumer products. Just this March, the European Court of Human Rights held Switzerland at fault for violating the human rights of its citizens by failing to adequately combat climate change. The publicity around such cases is even making it into leading newspapers like the New York Times and Financial Times. The message is clear: if you want to talk the talk, you better walk the walk.

While environmental groups are quick to celebrate these historic wins, those of us working at the interface with industry see another side to climate litigation. In the maritime industry, there are rising concerns that green shipping corridors will be the next target of greenwashing allegations.

For those unaware, green shipping corridors are collaborative initiatives along specific trade routes that seek to promote the feasibility of zero-emission shipping. Like many other industries thrust under the microscope of environmental scrutiny, the maritime industry is actively seeking decarbonization solutions to reduce its emissions. Not least because the International Maritime Organization, the UN body that regulates international shipping, clearly indicated in its Revised Greenhouse Gas Strategy the goalposts towards which the industry must move (i.e. net-zero emissions by or around 2050. With such ambition, green shipping corridors are seen as a key means to support the maritime industry’s transition to adopting more sustainable fuels and testing emerging technologies and practices.

At this point, you may be asking, “Well, what’s the problem?” If these companies back up their sustainability claims, there’s no issue… right? Well, yes and no. As with most things in life, the answer is more complicated and has much to do with the nature of green corridor collaborations.

Long Timelines

At present, there are no green corridors in operation. This is no surprise to many in the industry, as green corridors only became a common concept in the past few years. Over this time, green corridor initiatives have bloomed to a current total of 44, with new initiatives being announced sporadically across the globe. That said, the majority of corridor initiatives are at a “pre-feasibility” level where stakeholders look into possible options to decarbonize operations along specific routes. Indeed, the usefulness of these early stages is to support general awareness-raising of shared challenges and knowledge dissemination while focusing on a concrete case.

Most of these corridors won’t be operational for years to come, with some ambitious ones aiming to see zero-emission ships on the water by 2027 at the earliest. This is due to various reasons, many of which can be attributed to the scale of these projects, the need for inter-country collaboration along the route, as well as uncertainties in fuel supply, international regulations, and certifications. However, the lack of quick, visible movement can make some question the progress these initiatives are making and whether they are true to their objectives of reducing climate emissions.

Complex Collaboration

One must also consider that the maritime industry is seeing unprecedented levels of cross-value chain collaboration, but that doesn’t immediately ease long-held traditions of competitive behavior. Simply getting actors around the same table can be difficult, with multiple rounds of legal checks and assurances of confidentiality before making any type of public announcement of intent to collaborate.

Even with such assurances, for these initiatives to move forward, a certain level of data sharing is required. This includes potentially commercially sensitive information regarding company operations, such as number of shipments, types of cargo, fuel consumption, bunkering locations, expected market trends, and investments into new vessels. When a corridor has one or more competitive players in the mix, these conversations can get bogged down unless a trusted third-party acts as an intermediary to aggregate and anonymize data. Add in the fact that the maritime industry is not known for its transparency and often shies away from publicly sharing progress or lessons learned from its endeavors and, well, it’s easy to see how some can view them merely as paper initiatives.

Misaligned Expectations

Another reason green corridors could be viewed as greenwashing is due to misaligned expectations on what is considered progress. Like with most projects, green corridors start with a concept that needs validation, then a review of financial and economic feasibility, followed by securing necessary permits and approvals, before a final investment decision — the “go / no-go” point.

Depending on the type of corridor as well, there may be a series of final investment decisions that need to be in place to make the corridor a reality: upgrades to port bunkering and storage infrastructure, building a renewable energy plant, establishing a green fuel processing facility, and ordering zero-emission vessels, to name a few. This makes these endeavors challenging and very expensive, with many struggling to prove their financial and economic feasibility without some form of external support.

Unlike announcements of new green hydrogen projects, wherein it’s widely acknowledged that only a fraction of them will actually come to fruition, green corridors are somehow viewed differently. If public expectations hold such initiatives to higher standards, without seeing them as exploratory projects that may fail to achieve implementation, then claims of greenwashing may yet follow.

While it’s possible some companies have jumped on the green corridor bandwagon to take advantage of current trends, many within the industry have dedicated time and resources to better understanding how they can sustainably transition in the years to come. The recent flurry of greenwashing allegations have led to rising concerns within the maritime industry and those active in green shipping corridors. Will they become the next target?

Such rumblings are already seeing consequences in maritime collaborations. The mere fear of having the greenwashing finger pointed at their company will lead to a reluctance of industry members to go on the record, support or endorse messages, and back engagements either in person or via branding. This is exemplified in the recent rollback of climate ambitions by both TUI Cruises and AIDA after their public claims towards decarbonization were criticized. Should such hesitation by the industry continue, there could be further negative implications as fewer companies engage in sustainability-oriented collaborations or use their voice to speak out to government and public officials.

Green corridors are in their infancy and need time to mature, test, validate, and find support. They are complex initiatives that depend on multiple maritime actors — ports, shipping companies, fuel suppliers, governments, and financiers — to come together and align on actions to support shipping’s decarbonization. They represent one of the few means by which the maritime industry can come together in a non-competitive forum to collaborate on decarbonization challenges in a practical manner and accelerate the sector’s energy transition.

Whether greenwashing claims will target green corridors next, no one can be certain. But two things we do know. The first is that though the crackdown on greenwashing is heartily welcomed – a word of caution is also needed to ensure that the wave of these litigations do not prove counterproductive to or impede the broader goals of green shipping corridors. The second is that maritime actors involved in these initiatives can take heed now to mitigate the likelihood of such claims occurring. Improving the transparency of such initiatives by communicating realistic timelines, highlighting challenges, and acknowledging where progress is being made or stalled can help alleviate concerns that these initiatives are all talk and no walk.

Photo credit: Global Maritime Forum
Published: 16 May 2024