International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2018/Spring 2019 | Page 72

The Toxicity of Maritime Overcapacity
of this overcapacity would be colossal. And it is simply impossible to impose ruin
on the third or half of maritime operators in the world who own these now toxic
assets; the opportunities to escape into zones of weak laws and international competition
are too numerous.
Moreover, this mechanism is expected to gain further ground, for regulatory
reasons in this case. The application of international standards to reduce levels
of pollutant emissions by the International Maritime Organization will trigger a
departure of ships from the first-hand sector, the sector subject to these standards,
toward the second-hand and third-hand sectors. In these other sectors, the flag
states are less restrictive in their application of standards.
There are currently not very many ships in the third-hand maritime sector
(where used ships are reused), and they probably account for less than ten percent
of global transportation capacity. This sector use secondary shipping routes,
and its less-well maintained ships can bring harmful effects to these routes, since
these vessels offer highly competitive transportation opportunities for questionable
freight. 20 The sector also contributes to a deterioration of safety and security
in maritime traffic. As a reminder, the most recent collisions between ships have in
each case resulted in the deaths of a dozen sailors, making this threat a serious risk,
and this is without even going into the environmental risks involved.
Secondary routes are also less monitored by way of international protocols
on ship security. These routes will most likely be the site of the next growth in
global freight shipping given the inter-BRICS cooperation. And they pass off the
coast of French overseas territories.
Overcapacity is a Long-Term, Global Problem
with Few Short-Term Individual Solutions
Cumulative maritime overcapacity is the result of a capitalistic surge that
cannot be managed without effective, collective regulation. Either the actors
are not receiving the right signals, or there are too many of them to organize,
or they are continuing to benefit from marginal gains despite the economic
decline. Regulation is difficult because it would mean public regulatory obligations,
for example in terms of dismantling, which would lead to ships gravitating
toward states whose legal regimes are less strict (both in terms of flags and commercial
registry) and would involve a loss of competitiveness. On the international
scale, this would require agreements by all nations capable of granting flags when
in some cases their revenue is based on overcapacity in proportion to the number
and capacity of the ships flying their flag. Once involved in a heavy investment,
20 For example, illegal timber trafficking. In the third trimester of 2017, one operation alone was able
to capture more than 700 containers of illegal wood from Mozambique headed for China. Similar
amounts of illegally trafficked hazardous waste were found, also transported by container ship.
69