Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport (MCST) Blog

  Maria Sahib is a consultant with the Micronesia Centre for Sustainable Sea Transport In my last article many moons ago in the Fiji Sun dailies, I talked about the importance of addressing carbon emissions from fishing vessels at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). I also raised pertinent questions about which UN body would take responsibility for decarbonising the fishing industry. In this article, however, the supply chain issues of fish products will be discussed and the significance of transportation in the supply chain. According to UNCTAD [1]  (2016), trade in marine products and services can create opportunities for economic growth, export diversification, and new investments including sustainable fishing and aquaculture, sustainable and resilient marine transport and logistic services, and in links with maritime and coastal tourism. Global trade is only possible through the transport sector and is largely dependent on the shipping industry.    By ...

  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...

  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...