• Consider offering to contribute to the costs of deviation to share costs during the Covid-19 crisis.
• Call on government authorities to implement coordinated and consistent policies and legal measures designed to alleviate the situation of seafarers during the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes designating seafarers as “key workers” and implementing the IMO recommended framework of protocols.
Reprieve, but more needs to be done
While positive steps have been taken to tackle the crisis, issues remain, and the threat of new Covid-19 variants can quickly reverse the tide. Today, still fewer than 60 countries have responded to the UN resolution and designated seafarers as “key workers”. Seafarers are still not being prioritised in many countries’ vaccination roll-out plans.
If the blockage of the Suez Canal in March this year, by just one vessel, has taught us anything, it’s that just one disruption in the chain can have a significant impact on global trade. Today, 200,000 potential links in the chain are at risk of breaking and as such it remains critical that this crisis be resolved swiftly. We continue to urge fellow investors to engage with companies on this, governments to take the needed action and the media to call more attention to the issue.
Ana-Victoria Quaas, Sustainable Investing Analyst, Fidelity International
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