2022 World Maritime Day Parallel Event, Durban, South Africa (opening)

2022 World Maritime Day Parallel Event 

Durban, South Africa 

11-14 October 2022 

Opening ceremony Wednesday, 12 October 2022

Opening speech by IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim 

Honourable Minister,

Honourable Deputy Minister, Premier,

Excellencies, Ministers, ladies and gentlemen,

After a two-year pause in parallel events due to the pandemic, it is an enormous pleasure to be able to welcome you all here to Durban for the 2022 World Maritime Day Parallel Event. 

The Parallel Event was instituted to provide an opportunity to take the World Maritime theme "on the road" and it is undoubtedly one of the most important maritime events, worldwide.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to the Government of South Africa hosting the 2022 World Maritime Day Parallel Event here in Durban, which is the first in person parallel event after two and a half years of challenges due to the COVID pandemic and a geopolitically challenging environment.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations is the global standard setting body for international shipping.

Shipping and maritime activities are prime users of the oceans. Shipping is invaluable to global trade and economic growth, as made abundantly clear during the pandemic. Shipping carries over 80 per cent of world trade, providing the most economic and environmentally sustainable way of transporting cargo.

IMO has adopted more than 50 conventions to make shipping safer and to protect the marine environment.

The maritime sector - like the rest of the world - is voyaging through substantial changes.  We, at IMO, work tirelessly to ensure that the regulatory framework is constantly enhanced and strengthened to meet new demands and challenges.

Shipping is truly international, connecting and affecting all of us, so the regulatory framework must be fair, and must ensure no one is left behind as the industry moves towards even greener operations.

All these efforts are reflected in our World Maritime theme for this year is "New technologies for greener shipping", which highlights the need to support the maritime sector's green transition into a sustainable future, while leaving no one behind.

During this parallel event, you will have the opportunity to debate and discuss that theme through a series of panel sessions. The overall aim is to reiterate the importance of both a sustainable maritime sector and the need to build better and greener in a post pandemic world and then to move forward to put these ambitions into practice.

We must continue this voyage together towards preserving the environment by accelerating decarbonization of the maritime sector.

Two key words describe how this can be achieved: 'innovation' and 'inclusivity'.

Innovation is fundamental to the maritime industry's successful energy transition. It requires new technologies, renewable alternative fuels and infrastructure to support low- and zero-carbon shipping, along with new financial solutions to support all those practical aspects.

We also need innovative teams working together, created through research and development partnerships. These should involve both public and private sector because we need all hands-on-deck to ensure these initiatives succeed.

This needs to be done in the most inclusive way possible as we address capacity-building, technology and infrastructure to bring on board developing countries, in particular least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the energy transition. No one should be left behind.

Digitalization and automation can be counted amongst the technologies that will help us on the voyage towards cleaner, greener and more efficient shipping but this does not mean that we ignore the human element.

On the contrary, we must ensure that seafarers' welfare is properly taken into account, just as we need to ensure that current and future seafarers are adequately trained to handle shifting technologies. And in doing so, we must promote diversity and gender parity including diversity in maritime.  

Ladies and gentlemen,

Shipping is indispensable to global trade and sustainable development. Here in Durban, the busiest port in South Africa, the evidence of that is clear.

IMO is committed to supporting all Member States in their implementation of international maritime conventions and instruments, through targeted projects, technical cooperation, and partnership building.

Our collective future in maritime requires greater transparency, more sharing and better analysis of data alongside collaborative thinking.

By working together collaboratively and cooperatively, we can make shipping greener and more resilient. That is our shared goal.

I thank all the eminent speakers and panellists joining us here today and over the next two days. I am sure we are going to enjoy fruitful, interesting and productive discussions and presentations, as we come together to explore how we can work to ensure that shipping, ports and the maritime industry as a whole are greener and more resilient while supporting employment and driving forward the blue economy across nations.

I am confident that with a collaborative spirit leading to increased and inclusive partnerships, we will find solutions to those issues that confront us.

And I would like to close my speech by referring to the Great leader's, Nelson Mandela's message:

"A winner is a dreamer who never gives up."

I thank, once again, the Government of South Africa for hosting this event here in Durban.  

Thank you.