Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport (MCST) Blog

  Can Fiji turn Attention to Retention? Andrew Irvin, Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport, andrew.irvin@usp.ac.fj As Fiji focuses on the future of its shipping sector, reflection on its past is a crucial undertaking. While in recent years, Fiji has revived its sailing heritage and enjoys an active sailing and paddling community alongside the continued presence of small-scale shipbuilding and larger dry-docking/repair operations, the capacity to independently meet the needs of domestic shipping operations has fallen by the wayside. Understanding what is required to accommodate the existing needs across the industry reveals that the public enterprise reform [1] undertaken thirty years ago offers only a partial blueprint for restoration of this capacity. It was not only a stripping of material assets that took place. Fiji has now endured three decades of human resource capacity loss as citizens seek education and employment opportunities abroad. In 1994, a few years aft...

by Alison Newell, Technical Advisor to MCST and Director Sustainable Sea Transport  This article was written a year ago before appearing in this blog. Turning the tide: what do we do about small boats and the crucial role they play in Fiji’s domestic maritime fleet?   There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about the allocation of R&D funding to support the decarbonisation of large ships as part of the covid-19 economic stimulus responses around the world. Countries such as Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Germany and others have announced multi-million dollar financing packages for zero-emissions or low-carbon vessel design and trials (see for example the UK Government’s recent announcement of £400m for a Belfast-based project to develop zero emission, high-speed ferries https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4017015/belfast-zero-emission-ferry-project-gbp400m-uk-government-funding-winners ).   There has also been discussion on how Fiji could position itself as...

Peter Nuttall Micronesia Centre for Sustainable Transport This article was written a year before appearing on this blogsite. As we begin a new decade, the Sun is asking what 2020 heralds for Fiji’s shipping future? Shipping, especially our domestic sector, is facing major challenges. We are a maritime nation. Our fleet of commercial vessels - from outboard-driven village fibers, barges, landing craft, tourist vessels, to large passenger/cargo ferries - is the very lifeline connecting our more than 300 islands. Like other Pacific Islands states, we have long shipping routes, sometimes hundreds of nautical miles, to service relatively small communities. It has always been a relatively high-risk business and margins, especially for our remote and most vulnerable communities, are thin. High fuel prices, an often-aged fleet and a large scattered infrastructural footprint, have always presented major challenges to both government and private sector operators alike. There are major systemic u...

  Safeguarding Shipping Service in Fiji Andrew Irvin, Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport,  andrew.irvin@usp.ac.fj A stir was caused this past weekend when Goundar Shipping’s social media account circulated an announcement it would be immediately ceasing its operations around the country [1] .  Though on Monday, Goundar Shipping subsequently announced the social media account was hacked, and it has no intention to discontinue its operations in Fiji [2] , the flurry of responses around the ramifications for domestic shipping of Goundar Shipping’s exit from the sector raises a number of questions worth answering in advance of any domestic shipping industry upheaval of similar scale. As mentioned in the most recent column on COVID-19’s impacts on the economy, domestic shipping is taking a significant hit due to the restrictions on passenger travel beyond Viti Levu.  Sector-Wide Challenges Beyond sector-wide challenges, Goundar Shipping has been embroiled in inv...

  Peter Nuttall             Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport,     This article was published in the Fiji Sun a year ago since appearing on this blogsite. Drua Fleet of Ovalau 1855  Canoe Shed Tonga I Vola Siga Vou – (credit Island Encounters Photography) These truly are unprecedented times. Fiji, and its Pacific neighbours, are faced with two national disasters - the aftermath of Severe Tropical Cyclone Harold and the Covid19 pandemic. But a third, and possibly greatest threat, now looms large - a global economic depression likely of a magnitude unseen since the Great Depression. The effects of this will rock our vulnerable Pacific economies for the foreseeable future. One of the few silver linings from the Great Depression was the renaissance in traditional canoe building that happened in maritime Fiji and especially the Lau group. The great drua fleets that were commonplace through central Oceania had largely been dismantl...

  Dr Peter Nuttall, Scientific and Technical Advisor to the Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport . This article was published in April 2020, a year before appearing on this blogsite Back to the future - lessons from the Past  -  In the build-up to the Madrid Climate Summit last year, Fiji leaders, alongside other Pacific states, announced new high ambition targets for its domestic shipping sector. 100% carbon free by 2050 with a milestone of 40% reduction by 2030. Ambitious, challenging, even daunting. But just like winning gold at Rio, it is achievable.   100-odd years ago shipping underwent a fundamental technology revolution, from thousands of years of primary wind and paddle propulsion to fossil-fuel powered underwater propellers.  First, we burnt coal to make steam and then we invented the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to burn heavy oil and then diesel. Finally we could drive a ship against the forces of nature and get to market faster. More re...