So it was understandable that all manner of aspects of greener shipping were discussed in the British Columbian city, which itself prides itself on its environmental enthusiasm.

But there are all sorts of nagging questions which refuse to disappear around this worthy topic.

There is the matter, for instance of slow speed as an excellent method of reducing CO2, which additionally provides a sort of auxiliary function in soaking up some of the excess capacity caused by wild and over-enthusiastic ordering.

But just as soon as the economic clouds disperse, will we not see shipping speeding up again, the green consciences of operators stung by the goads of the shippers, who would rather their goods were sped to market like they used to be at 26 knots?

There’s a conundrum.

But are not the users of ships- tender and environmentally conscious flowers like Walmart and Ikea, who like to present their own corporate social responsibility and green credentials to the people who shop in their stores, not anxious to avoid accusations that their own supply chains are polluting the planet?

Will they not happily agree that the pedestrian passage of the ships carrying their goods can be approved, even though their inventories grow hugely?

Nobody can answer that question either, although some have their suspicions.

And if a cleaner, greener shipping industry is required to use low sulphur, nearly no sulphur, or expensive distillates in its lean, green diesels, will not charterers who have to pay for the costly fuel happily acquiesce in this environmental improvement?

Might they even go halves if an owner wishes to retrofit an enormous scrubber in his exhaust system? After all, everyone surely has a vested interest in saving the planet? Or is this a case of wishful thinking?

These are serious points if we consider that a large container ship is likely to spend 10 times its capital cost on something to bung into its bunker tanks – possibly a billion dollars worth- during its lifetime of oceanic steaming.

And that’s the rub – where is the cashflow coming from, in an industry in which the customers grudge paying for their transport, that is going to buy all these environmental add-ons? There are great commercial opportunities in being green, we were told.

Great, just as long as the current plunging markets can be survived.

Sadly, like him, I was unable to come up with anything concrete other than agreeing that a new strategy is needed.

Whether that should be – as Intertanko has advocated – a change in the rules of engagement I’m not sure, but I think that just like the issue of employing armed guards onboard ship, it risks increasing the body count in the short term while failing to provide that long term vision of a Gulf of Aden without pirates.

But a recent article in The Economist on the International Criminal Court in Africa  set me thinking, or rather recalling a conversation with Peter Hinchliffe of the International Chamber of Shipping at the recent IMO MSC meeting.

Hinchliffe confessed himself exasperated beyond measure with the situation, expressed through his organisation’s strategy of reminding the industry that Somali piracy is not ‘situation normal’.

What Hinchliffe advocated was an arrangement with the ICC to open a court for pirates and bring them to trial. This would be a lower court than the war crimes/genocide mandate that the ICC was set up for, but could still provide some efficient processing of pirates for trial and incarceration of the guilty.

There would be issues with this still – not least the likely media backlash about transporting pirates to Europe for trial, a location they are likely to see as a better bet than the streets of Xaradheere. What happens to them if acquitted and after the sentence is served, must all be decided.

But without punishment, there can be no deterrence and if Intertanko, ICS, BIMCO et al want to do something about piracy, they may have to admit that the game in the Gulf cannot be won so long as they cannot bring the weight of international institutions to bear.

Hinchliffe further remarked that although the IMO process continues in parallel with the UN, the chance for real change lies as much with the UN Contact Group as it does with MSC.

And as he glumly but accurately observed, pirates seem to make very good risk managers. Faced with the naval presence they have adapted, sailing further afield and employing motherships in the worst of weathers if they feel there is a prize for the taking.

This is a stark truth and one I doubt will endear me to the letter writers but it suggests that shipping could try and learn from the pirates about new strategies. Because if a global, highly efficient industry cannot either mobilise government support for its position or generate an innovative solution, then this situation will never end.

The Economist article attempted to cast the ICC not as an post-imperialist body but rather a partner for African nations keen to establish legal legitimacy and bring the most obvious criminals to trial. With Somalia in pieces, the ICC will not be opening an office there any time soon, but its neighbours should listen to Hinchliffe’s ideas and start trying to get the western economies – so dependent on cargo through Suez, to take a bigger stake in solving the problem of piracy by legal means.

But just imagine the pile of paper which would have to be carried by a world wide trader, if every darned country, every region and most local authorities had their own take on what regulations they expected every ship to follow. It would be chaos on stilts, geographical anarchy, a patchwork of bureaucratic nonsense, that would drive shipmasters stark, staring mad. Unless it was a very big ship, or several hundred tons of cargo shut out, it would probably end up overloaded.

But the seeds of this garden of tares are already being sown, as local and regional politicians determined to put their own stamp on affairs, while being goaded by restive natives and (mostly) environmental zealots, formulate their own regulations.

Of course local interests wish to be heard if they see ships polluting their coasts, or perhaps even threatening to do the same by their presence. It’s easy to blacken the name of an industry, especially when it appears to be run mainly by foreigners. From the European Union to the coast of California, regulatory protectionism appears to have been unleashed, and nobody seems able to put this particular genie back in its bottle.

“Keep regulation global” says BIMCO in the lead article in which the shipping organisation reflects on the major issues which confront the industry. You might think that there are all manner of  problems that keep shipping folk awake at night, but the fact that BIMCO has chosen to lead with this topic is significant. It is far from a new song – fifty years ago the organisation was inveighing against regulatory localism, but it is arguably more serious a threat than it has ever been.

Shipping is privileged to enjoy, in the IMO, one of the few UN agencies that really works, yet member states still find it more politic to produce local regulations than to ratify and bring into force sensible, pragmatic IMO conventions agreed by consensus. Goodness, it is a global industry, which operates under a thoroughly workable international regime. There is just no excuse for impatient Californians, or Brussels-based Europeans going off on their local or regional own and making nonsense of these international agreements. Whether it is environmental or trade rules, a trading world needs to operate against international criteria.

We have had the Oscars this week. Perhaps we should be offering a sort of international booby-prize, with nominations from shipping around the world, for protectionist bodies and politicians which bog down international trade and transport in their protectionist sludge. What should we call it?

Sir Robert Coleman, who once ran the transport directorate in Brussels and now monitors the EU for BIMCO, is to head up a taskforce to find solutions to the regional crisis facing maritime recruitment. It is one of those problems which sounds a lot easier to solve than it really is, once the full scale of the problem is revealed.

Europe is a high cost region, and just like Japan, or the United States, or Australia, domestic seafarers have been priced out of their shipping industries.

Deep sea, a declining number of officers are found on ships which are controlled in these high-cost places – otherwise shipowners are happy to shop at the global maritime manpower bazaar, where there are any number of bargains to be found.

It suits the shipowners’ customers too, because they would rather have cheap shipping, rather than pay a little more and get shipping that employs locals.

Politicians have tended to go along with this, to the chagrin of European and other high cost seafarers and their unions, who have seen their job opportunities shrink, and their terms, if indeed they can find employment, deteriorate.

Does any of this matter? Well, yes it does, because there is a very great deal of European seafaring, and hands-on maritime expertise and indeed sea-trained and marine related jobs within the maritime infrastructure that have depended on expertise generated and educated within the region. The jobs won’t go away, so do we really wish to see them filled by expatriates, because there is no locally recruited talent?

When he worked for the European Commission, Sir Robert once proposed that intra-European shipping, such as ferries, should be manned by Europeans, something that was denounced as protectionist by European shipowners who wished to retain their new freedoms to hire anyone from anywhere in the world on their ships. I didn’t think it was a bad idea at all, arguing that just as we probably would find it politically hard to hire cheap foreign bus drivers on our buses, while there were locals available, European waters could legitimately be treated as a domestic “pond”, reserved for domestic employment.

Such a view did not commend itself to shipowners, who suggested that they were unable to find sufficient locals to do the jobs that were available, as “Europeans no longer wanted to go to sea”. The arguments continue, and doubtless will resurface with Sir Robert’s working party, once it starts asking questions.

There are not many choices available, it would seem. The EU could be prescriptive and centralist, but would risk making shipping less competitive, at a time when it ought to be growing faster than other modes of transport, for the environmental benefits it brings. But already, ferry owners have warned that there are so many environmental costs being heaped upon them, that they can see their customers opting to send their goods by truck.

It could perhaps be interventionist, making it worthwhile owners staffing their ships with Europeans, perhaps doing more in terms of taxation or the fiscal regime, or helping with the increasingly expensive business of training ships’ officers in particular.

Or it could merely exhort, which has been tried in the past, without much success, or put a bit of extra resource into awareness, education and recruitment. It might look at what works reasonably well, and what doesn’t. But just as we probably won’t have a European Coastguard, we probably don’t want a European Merchant Navy.

It might be argued that shipping companies really have the greatest responsibility for educating and training the employees they need. If Sir Robert’s eventual report might propose some solutions that provide some institutional support and a formula for financial encouragement to shipping company training initiatives – for Europeans, naturally – , it might do European shipping a great service in the future, and even give some tips to the Japanese, Americans et al.

Last week it was announced that 2010 will see another  marine manpower survey undertaken by the International Shipping Federation and BIMCO.

At five year intervals since 1990, the partners have shone a light on the supply and demand situation for the benefit of all. Because it matters that the growth of the world fleet is in some way managed in harmony with the provision of sufficient people to drive all these ships.

Like it or not, seafaring skill is a global commodity, and it is important to know what is what, and who is where. Seafarers are not the flexible friends they were in the past, but becoming as specialised as their ships are, and the provision of their skills are as important as the ships themselves.

And it is arguably easier, and lot quicker to build a ship than it is to recruit, train and retain the specialists who will operate it. So the worldwide manpower picture is important, if we are ever to change from our old habits of merely poaching talent when we need it, from somebody who has taken the trouble to equip themselves with the specialists they need.

Since 1990, the main thrust of the IFF-BIMCO reports, carefully collated by Warwick University, has been one of plenty of ratings but growing shortages of officers. The 2005 survey suggested that there could be 27,000 officers short by 2015, and urged increased training. Well and good, but in a shipping world that is so lean and mean that shipbuilders supply ships without a single spare bed, where are a couple of cadets going to sleep?

There will be those looking at the present economic condition of the industry and may be tempted to “file and forget” worried questions from HR about impending shortages. Certainly the upcoming survey, which will produce a report at the end of next year, will be conducted against a good deal of unanticipated changes, taking in layups and slow-steaming, order cancellations and postponements, lots of new tonnage and huge scrapyard activity.

But the “fundamentals” , as analysts like to say, will remain intact, in an ageing workforce of senior officers, a struggle to persuade people to go to sea, and what’s more, to remain there for a decent period. This research by the partners, aided this time around with an Asian eye from Dalian Maritime University, will be vital for our maritime future, even if we don’t like what it tells us.