Following the launching of the 3rd Chios Festival in London’s Hellenic Centre as well as the latest announcement, keeping our promise we bring you here below John Faraclas’ speech in english and look forward to your comments. Meantime we are pleased to advise you that we are overwhelmed with the response – particularly the written one as well as the impromptu one from dozens of attendees and others who heard of his presentation in Greek given the request by the organisers:
“Good Evening, Your All Holiness, Excellencies, Fellow panellists, Ms Korina Georgiou our moderator, ladies and gentlemen from all over Planet Ocean, dear Chian Compatriots, Family and Friends.
I am more than honoured to delivered my third speech* during this millennium in the Motherland of Chios on this 3rd Chios Festival which successfully ends tonight, thanks to the North Aegean Region and its prefect Professor Kostas Moutzouris’ vision and efforts to create something totally different – as he mentioned on the 28th of August during the kick start of this Chios Festival and in principal that of Mrs. Dimitra Moutzouri, the heart and soul of these events, after the successful launching in London’s Hellenic Centre.
It is great to have His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is dedicated on the Environment, Sir Thimio Mitropoulos, the IMO’s Emeritus Secretary-General and needless to say a professor specialised amongst others on the issue of Constitution, the former president of the Hellenic Republic, Prof. Pavlopoulos as many insist that the Environment should have a Constitutional Aura and Existence so to speak… Indeed I am pleased to meet the other participants, each of them an expert in his/her field on the Environment.
Another plus for this Environmental event is also the fact that a Chian, emanating from Kardamyla, launched HELMEPA, the late George Pantazi Livanos and from then on some MEPAS appeared / where created in Australia, Cyprus, Turkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay and the USA. INTERMEPA is the governing body (let’s call it) which is presided by a Chiot, Semiramis Paliou, CEO of Diana Shipping Inc., who also is the Greek HELMEPA’s president – pity she couldn’t make it.
HELMEPA is the Hellenic Marine Environment Protection Association; the pioneering voluntary commitment of Greek seafarers and ship owners to safeguard the seas from ship-generated pollution, undertaken in Piraeus, on June 4, 1982- 42 years ago!
The Shipping Industry is the top protector of the Environment! Is the subject of my speech tonight
What makes the people in the shipping industry unique is not only our knowledge or expertise, but also our willingness to share and care!! Eventually the Environment is a top priority to all intents and purposes given also the IMO’s triptych.
My triptych is:
No Shipping, No Shopping, No Sipping
Also I can assure you that Hypocrisy rules the waves and the UN!!!! EU included…. Cold War situ (elaborate live on the spot and very briefly)!! I am NOT biased but I have to be more than straight as the Shipping World’s emissions etc etc amounts officially to only 2,7 centum, the rest 97.30 centum comes from the land-based businesses and aviation who also destroy with their pollution our oceans; End of the story. The harsh reality is that shipping’s real pollution is only 1,6 centum, just to keep the record straight!
I have been extremely lucky as in 2018 I was moderating a panel in IBIA’s Copenhagen Conference on “2020: what keeps you awake at night…”; 2020 was a time-frame barrier for shipping to comply with certain lets call it criteria and rules in the effort to Decarbonise with the next date being 2030 or 2035 (some insist for an extension) and for the third one in 2050… Who lives who dies… by 2050 (even 2030/2035) is a bit odd as many other geopolitical issues might become the stumbling block as nothing will be achieved as planed and remember what general Dwight Eisenhower said – a maxim so to speak: Plan is everything, planning is nothing!
To this subject title- theme I begun with a counter question to a full house audience of 300 plus delegates: “What will happen if we opt for the Alternative means of Energy?” There was complete silence in the room. Some women delegates staring on me, wondered… So I said: One thing will happen: “BIG MONEY WILL CHANGE HANDS”.
The greatest contributors for the safety the Environment are:
a) the Classification Societies and in particular the IACS members
b) the P&I Clubs (Protection and Indemnity)
c) Shipping Associations, such as INTERCARGO – launch by the late Mimi J. Chandris yet another Chian…
d) WISTA International and country WISTAs
e) Ministries of Shipping and Transport including the Coast Guard of almost most nations…
f) Some NGOs
and many lastly Associations and Organisations as well as Charities…
By far the Shipping Industry is the most organised industry in comparison with land/offshore sectors!
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Planet Ocean and the state we are now, as we speak; just remember that now means something without duration!
No Water, No Life!
Planet Ocean is not only about the Oceans. It is also about humankind’s long and sometimes contentious relationship with the prime source of life on Earth. We wish that all people respect the World we live in and we encourage all to contribute to a more sustainable ocean eco-system. It all rests with Discipline!!!
My huge/big international Shipping and Seafaring Family and colleagues have the same background like me: each and all of us have seen and or told the beauty of this World through our journeys/sailing on board ships and we wish to protect this beauty! Take Paul Claudel who wrote: “ It is not my thorns that protect me, says the rose, It is my fragrance”! Equally the predictions of environmental Doom and Gloom will not save the World, but our capability to be touched by the Earth’s plight and to feel its beauty just might! It’s all about Love!, Love will change our World. Correct me Your All Holiness!
The big question for me stands as: how has mankind with its supposed intelligence and means let down the underwater world to its current degree? The list of ills suffered by oceans, such as pollution, depletion of resources – remember in former Yugoslavia the pollution from the depleted uranium bombs…, and global warming, continues to lengthen with overall population growth. The majority of these problems are invisible, lying just under the ocean’s surface. I really wonder: will we ever realise their dire consequences in time to act? It is difficult for us to grasp the importance of environmental protection even though our lives directly depend on it: 70 to 75 centum of the food supply provided by the oceans is becoming extinct, which could lead to mankind’s starvation. The entire ocean surface is polluted (with an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic waste per square kilometre) in 2012, which in turns risks poisoning humankind.-
Our climate is becoming more unbalanced every day; even more than that we thought could be irreversible. We are tempted to risk more damage to the environment every day by increasing our demands by market speculation and by the belief that technology will eventually reverse the situation. In fact, haven’t humans become the most endangered species, surpassing even the whales? The Wales in religion Your All Holiness is another example. The game of false pretences rules, unfortunately, our world!
The oceans cover 70 centum of the earths surface. With over 361 million km2 of its surface covered by water, the earth well deserves the name BLUE PLANET ! The southern hemisphere is covered by water than by land, so we call it: The Marine Hemisphere!
ALSO: More than 70 centum of the worlds megacities are located on coasts!!! Industrialisation and Globalisation have led to the development of large coastal cities. SPORE, SHANGHAI, OSAKA-KOBE, NEW YORK, ROTTERDAM, CONSTANTINOPLE. Half of our cities with a population of more than a million can be found on or near an estuary, such as London or Seoul! Personally I am against Globalisation which deprives primarily of Continent, Europe, and pollutes the World. And as we speak with the events in the Red Sea with ships having to do the round of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, the danger of pollution is on the increase. Add the drought in Panama due to no rains and the Canal there working on a slots regime with tonnage having to go down at the Magellan straits …
Only about 25 centum of the world’s seafloor is currently mapped in detail, but an initiative called Seabed 2030 aims to get to 100 percent in just over the next few years… It was less than 10 centum in 2012, 12 years ago! Now, just think that other planets, such as Mars and Venus are better mapped than Earth!!!
3.5 billion years ago, life appeared in the oceans.
It is estimated that 80 centum of Marine biodiversity has yet to be discovered. 12 years ago we stood at 91 centum.
30 centum of the planet’s mangrove swamps have been destroyed; it was 20 centum in 2012.
There are 12,000 Oil and Gas platforms in operation around the World. In 2012 there were 6,000…
50 centum of the containers shipped around the world are empty; there has been a fluctuation from 2012 going up to 65 centum, down to 40 centum (COVID) and now back to 50 centum.
90 centum of the goods produced and consumed in the world are transported by sea – the Silk Road and all that jazz won’t be viable…
70 plus centum of commercial species of fish have already been fished to a maximum or beyond their reproductive capacity…. AND 60 centum of the fish consumed in the world comes from aquaculture. Greece and apparently here in Chios we are the CHAMPIONS!!!
Deep-sea trawlers destroy 2,000 km2 of seabed each day, that is 15 times the area of Paris.
Earlier on I mentioned the issue of plastic waste. Now each year 9.5 billion kilos of plastic waste are thrown into the Oceans. Up 3.5 billion kilos from the 6.5 billion on 2012!!!
114,000 tons of nuclear waste have been dumped in our oceans…in 2012. Now this figures stands at about 200,000. Check it!
Mind me we also have 200 – 250 dead zones identified in our Oceans, these are areas with too little oxygen for organism to be able to live due to massive levels of organic matter…. The Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea are major problems as the number of dead zones is doubling very ten – twelve years…
The Pollution of the Seas affects 2/3 of the world!!!!!!!!!! Please listen to this: Dissolved solid waste, plastics and heavy metals are transported towards the sea in streams and rivers. Water is also contaminated with pesticides and nitrates leached from the soil . The Baltic Sea, which is virtually a closed body of water, is so polluted that several adjoining countries recommend that fish taken from the there should NOT be consumed. In South America, 98 centum of the domestic waste water is not treated!!!
Now, as all talk about the Arctic ICE. In 2012, 35 centum has melted since 1992, now we have 42 plus centum
The Oceans conserve more than 90,000 Twh of Thermal energy, over five times the amount of electricity generated in the world. In 2012 this was 80,000 and four times the amount….
Sea levels could rise by up to one meter by 2100…
AND what’s the Question of Governance?
Less than 1,4 centum of our Oceans in 2012 where protected. Today, less than 1 centum…. Terrible! Despicable!!
Just over 2,000 fishing trawlers fly a flag of Necessity !!
70 plus centum of the ocean does not fall under any jurisdiction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND this creates major geopolitical issues including some despicable MoU’s such as the one between Turkiye and Libya, or the messy situation in South China Sea; just recently China and The Philippines nearly clashed… Check the news!
Remember also that Shipping is attainment of Money and Seafarers; if you do not pocess both never begin any shipping adventure.
Some Notes:
1) When I was a young boy, my most impassioned battles with my parents – particularly with my Mother as my Father was a Merchant Marine Captain, were about eating vegetables and fruits. If you had asked me at the time, I would have confessed that I knew I should eat more of them. I just didn’t want to with the exception of Chian water-mellons. You can get the message!
2) We need Leaders! We need Mentors! We need to maintain Family Values!
THANK YOU.
