The wrong way to make the right law
Posted on | April 9, 2010 | No Comments
TIRED people make bad decisions. People who lack the right information to perform a given task make mistakes.
People who are distracted and whose attention is wandering will tend to make assumptions. People who are over-loaded with work will struggle to manage detail. Those who cannot communicate risk their words and actions being misinterpreted.
These thoughts occurred to me as I sat at the back of the 60th Marine Environment Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organization a week or so ago.
Four days and five hours after it had begun – not counting the hours put in by working groups, scheduled and impromptu meetings – the committee was limping to a close having achieved – what? As it was after 5:30 and there was no translation, the proceedings had reverted to English but the process was going round in circles.
It struck me as perverse. If we are agreed that we wouldn’t ask seafarers to operate under the conditions noted above, then why would we ask our lawmakers to do precisely that when they are deciding the rules under which the same seafarers must operate?
To be as effective as it is, the IMO relies on the goodwill and enthusiasm of its member states. As certain flag states regularly remind the plenary session, the IMO asks a huge amount of its members – just as it does of its secretariat and staff – in terms of time, money and travel to attend committee and intercessional meetings, expert and correspondence groups.
The fact that the world’s biggest flags are located in developing and least developed countries is a function of the industry’s desire to cling to tradition over transparency, but it means – those countries say – sometimes having to make a choice between one budgetary cause or another.
If the IMO has been trying the patience of its members by asking ever more of them, it must be conscious of the risk that this presents. The risk can never be greater than when it is considering the vexed issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions from shipping. To a degree, this is not the IMO’s fault, since it must do something if it is not to be subject to outside interference.
It is this fear which keeps the IMO on course and keeps the pressure on member states and staff alike. But it leaves little or no time for reflection and analysis away from the day-to-day business which would allow the secretariat to connect, perhaps informally with its stakeholders internal and external.
And when discussing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping the debate needs to encompass a perspective far wider than the IMO delegates and some NGOs to have any meaning.
The outcome – or lack of it – from MEPC 60 asks several questions. The most important is whether the IMO can continue to convince the UNFCC that it is the correct and proper forum for deciding shipping’s response to climate change. To do that, it might have to accept that the concept of ‘no more favourable treatment’ for flag states is incompatible with the political reality of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ and that one will have to give way.
It might also consider whether, if it is really better at technical solutions than politics, then perhaps it should stick to what it is good at rather than do the other thing badly.
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