CARIBBEAN leaders are being urged to impose a “blue tax” on ships that use the region’s ports, with the money funnelled into a Caricom fund to protect fragile marine ecosystems.

The call, which was made during a discussion on sustainable shipping at the Caribbean Maritime University Industry Conference on Thursday, comes amid an annoyance from a few of the panellists that cruise lines and foreign shippers collect the profits while Caribbean waters take the hit.

Director of professional services at ECO Canada and former Trinidad and Tobago transport minister Devant Maharaj didn’t mince words.

“Rather than encourage more cruise ships to dump more faecal matter in our seas and more garbage in our seas, we should be charging a blue tax,” he said. “And we take that fund as a Caricom fund, not individual islands. Because if it goes to an individual island, it’ll go to a consolidated fund that will fix a road or a house or a school or something like that. Have a blue tax that Caricom uses to protect our area when necessary.”

Maharaj backed his call with figures.

“On a weekly basis, 795,000 tonnes of raw sewage is dumped in our ocean. Eight tonnes of raw garbage is thrown in our sea. Some 85 per cent of untreated sewage from these cruise liners are released in our ocean,” he told the audience. “Yet still, each island in Caricom courts cruise ships to come to their port.”

The tax proposal fed into a wider debate about the region’s role in global shipping. Logistics strategist Dr Eric Deans reminded participants that the Caribbean Basin accounts for nearly 20 per cent of the world’s shipping tonnage through so-called flags of convenience.

“Even though we’re flags of convenience, we are the sovereign nation for those vessels. So we set the rules regarding how those vessels carry sustainable practices. So I think we need to stop looking at ourselves as being small and insignificant. We control 20 per cent of global shipping,” he said.

Deans warned, however, that the region too often surrenders that leverage by ceding port control to foreign operators.

“When you give away our port to a foreign company … their interest isn’t going to be in making profits for that shipping line. In order to assert our dominance, we have to look at reclaiming our economic assets and operating them in an integrated manner in the industries that they support,” he added.

Others highlighted the weakness of existing frameworks. Radcliffe Spence, lecturer of shipping and logistics at the Caribbean Maritime University, pointed to Jamaica’s Kingston Freeport Terminal concession as an example of missed opportunity.

“Nowhere in that contract was it written about anything about sustainability… They are in there to make profit, and the arrangement is a profit-sharing arrangement,” he said. “Private sector companies, unless they must, will not voluntarily take on [sustainability]. It is something that they will pay less than what is required attention to.”

Spence contrasted that with efforts elsewhere in the region.

“Barbados, their terminal operating equipment are not from biofuel. They are from renewable sources or battery. Antigua expanding its port … they have the capacity to put further solar panels on the port and generate renewable electricity for their port activity,” he noted. Jamaica, by contrast, lags because of “lack of policy”.

However, private companies are beginning to step in where government policies trail.

Valerie Campbell, director of logistics and customer service at Campari Group Jamaica, explained that sustainability is embedded in the company’s procurement rules.

“We do not do business with organisations that have a record or that we are aware of that doesn’t conform with good sustainability or ESG (environmental, social, and governance) practices,” she said. “That is included in our sourcing and procurement strategies … and there is a quarterly evaluation that is done where during the year when we are reviewing how are you performing versus how you indicate that you would perform. Where there are anomalies that are identified, there are clauses that we would have that we treat with those situations.”

As Campari’s J Wray & Nephew operations ship to 44 countries from Jamaica, Campbell said the group’s scale allows it to influence how carriers operate.

Still, for Maharaj, the deeper problem is political fragmentation.

“We act as silos in the Caribbean and don’t unite as one front. We adopt conventions from the IMO (International Maritime Organization), but we don’t give the rest of the world conventions to adopt coming here,” he said.

The International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that regulates global shipping, has committed the sector to reach net zero emissions by 2050, with milestones in 2030 and 2040. Caribbean governments have signed on to these conventions but, as several speakers argued, lag in implementation and fail to use their collective influence to shape the agenda.

Maharaj pressed for a wider definition of sustainability beyond environmental measures.

“When most people think about sustainability, they focus on the environmental side, but sustainability is three parts. Environmental, social and economic. When we become economically self-sufficient, when we break the shackles of colonialism … that is when we will truly be sustainable,” he said.

From left: Radcliffe Spence, Lecturer in Shipping and Logistics at the Caribbean Maritime University; Dr Eric Deans, Managing Partner at DeepSight Maritime Intelligence Corporation; Valerie Campbell, Director of Logistics and Customer Service at Campari Group Jamaica; Dr Devant Maharaj, Director of Professional Services at ECO Canada; and Dr Ruth Potopsingh, Technical Advisor at Environmental Solutions Limited, who moderated the panel on sustainable shipping during the recent industry forum.