WOLRD PORT AUTHORITIES SIGN DECLARATION ON DISRUPTION, DIGITIZATION AND DECARBONIZATION DURING THE 6TH PORT AUTHORITIES ROUNDTABLE (PAR)

Tanger Med participated in the 6th edition of Port Authorities
Roundtable (PAR) alongside 19 port authorities from major ports around the world such as Busan, Shanghai, Singapore, Rotterdam, Antwerp…; to share insights and best practices and explore areas of collaboration.

The two-day virtual roundtable event focused on the role of ports in the global supply chain and their levering function to impact energy transition, climate change and the digital evolution.

High level discussions on disruption, digitization and decarbonization resulted in concrete action points.

Disruption
Ports took stock of various initiatives related to the challenges posed by incidents, the unexpected circumstances they cause and their impact on port operations and crew changes. Ports acknowledge that the exchange of experiences and best practices among peers has helped to overcome the impact of the pandemic. Building on this forward leaning cooperation, ports have agreed to further develop the PAR Incident Sharing Framework (PAR-ISF) and to introduce the PAR Incident Sharing Framework Template (PAR-ISFT),
enabling ports to report on a voluntary basis in a systematic and active way on incidents occurring in day-to-day operations of ports.This PAR-ISFT will be instrumental to the establishment of an open exchange of lessons learnt and best practices among leading ports.

Furthermore, ports will investigate the establishment of a mechanism to enable consultation and dialogue in case of disruptive incidents and crises.

Port Authorities also expressed support for the Singapore Shipping Tripartite Alliance Resilience (SG-STAR) Fund which brings together like-minded international partners from the industry, unions and governments to work with stakeholders in seafaring nations on solutions for safe crew changes.

Digitization
Having noted that container shipping remains the world’s most sustainable means of transportation for global trade and the expected rise in container transport, ports have acknowledged the need for the establishment of a global and neutral platform, allowing multi modal comparison of container routes. Hereto a coalition of PAR ports has expressed interest in exploring the potential of “Routescanner” to act as a transparent and neutral platform to examine container transport options and to further improve sustainable and cost-efficient global supply chains.
Decarbonization
In light of the publicly expressed global ambitions to achieve climate neutrality in the next three decades and the importance of the decarbonization of shipping in particular to realize this aspiration; the efforts announced by maritime key stakeholders and the inherent involvement of ports in this endeavor the Port Authorities Roundtable ports have agreed to further explore support to the Global Maritime Forum’s Getting to Zero Coalition COP 26 call to action in run up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 26 in Glasgow in November 2021. This call to action aims to encourage governments in preparing the necessary steps in support of the global ambition to decarbonizing international shipping by 2050, to support industrial scale zero emission shipping projects through national action and to deliver policy measures that will make zero emission viable by 2030.