Namepa: Providing a platform for dialogue
Posted on | June 14, 2010 | No Comments
One of the hats that I wear is “founding chairman” of the North American Marine Environment Protection Association, founded three years ago.
My first meeting with Greek shipowner George Livanos resulted from a surprising telephone call to my hotel room in Geneva in 1982.
I had heard of him, but we had never met. George had a plan, proposed to about 10 of us at dinner that evening: the Hellenic Marine Environment Protection Association. His aim was to show that the shipping industry cared about the health and diversity of the world’s oceans; that commercial shipping, so long associated in the public mind with degradation of the seas, could do its part, and more, to collaborate with scientific and cultural constituencies to instruct its fellow mariners, and help prevent, clean up and remove oceanic pollution, from whatever source.
Today, 28 years and counting, there are some six “mepas”, including those in Turkey, Australia, Cyprus, Uruguay, Ukraine, and our own, encompassing all of North America.
Unfortunately, George Livanos did not live to attend the ceremony three years ago, at which more than twenty companies became NAMEPA founders. But George, who was born in the U. S. A., would I am sure applaud the eighty companies and individuals that are now committed to collaborating as NAMEPA members in a growing movement that brings what Americans and Canadians still call “private industry” into partnership with government administrators – notably the Canadian and U. S. coast guards, our environmental protection agencies, the academic and scientific communities, and environmentalists, in collective efforts aimed at developing programs that teach, in and outside of our schools, the values of respect, response and remediation of our maritime and coastal biospheres.
The lessons learned in this endeavor have not come easily. As visible pollution has diminished in recent years, so has public, and therefore business’, sense of commitment. According to a March Gallup survey, “Americans are now less worried about environmental problems than at any time in the past 20 years.”
But April 20, the date of the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout, has changed that. For business, the concept of environmental risk — that failing to budget for adequate oil spill prevention could be really, really expensive — was made obvious again.
Just as it had been when the EXXON VALDEZ hit the rocks in 1989. When your company, regardless of how big it is, faces economic destruction, risk prevention begins to look like a sound financial policy. Corporate budget-balancers, please take note.
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