In 2021, the International Maritime Organisation, together with the Women's International Shipping & Trading Association, launched a survey to collect some hard data on female representation in the global maritime industry.

The second edition of the survey was published last week to coincide with International Day for Women in Maritime 2025 (which was celebrated on May 18th).

But the results were hardly cause for celebration.

Because while some progress has been made in terms of gender diversity in the maritime industry, the data in the 2024 edition suggests shipping is going backwards.

The results of the 2024 edition showed 176,820 women working in maritime across both private and public sectors, an increase of 14% from the 151,979 recorded in 2021.

But the global maritime workforce has grown considerably since the last survey, which means women now account for just under 19% of the workforce sampled, versus 26% in 2021.

Female employees make up just over 16% of the workforce in the private sector, compared to the 29% recorded in 2021, and a drop was also seen in female representation in mid-management positions, declining to just 20% in 2024 from 39% in 2021.

Lloyd’s List reporter Joshua Minchin spoke to three female leaders in the shipping industry, including Wista president Elpi Petraki, to get their reaction to the survey results and ask whether in a time where DEI programmes are coming increasingly under threat, shipping needs to rethink its own diversity strategy.

Joining Joshua on the podcast this week are:

Elpi Petraki, president of Wista International

Louise Proctor, deputy director, sub-division for planning and programming, Technical Cooperation and Implementation Division, IMO

Heidi Heseltine, chief executive, Diversity Study Group

Last year, both Belgium and the Netherlands, home to the key ports of Antwerp-Bruges and Rotterdam, reported a dramatic decline in the volume of cocaine seized.

As the traditional gateways into Europe for legal as well as illegal cargo, this is surely cause for celebration, or at the very least a pat on the back.

The only problem? Seizures in Portugal, Italy, Greece and other southern European countries increased. Which begs the question, how on earth do you stop smuggling?

Lloyd’s List reporter Joshua Minchin again speaks to four experts at the very frontline in the fight against smuggling to understand how public-private cooperation can identify high-risk containers and push back against what can seem like an incessant tide.

Plus, UNODC’s Bob van den Berghe explains how work in source countries can prevent illegal cargo ever getting on board a commercial vessel and strengthen relationships between law enforcement agencies at opposite sides of an ocean.

Joining Joshua on the podcast are:

• Joe Kramek, chief executive, World Shipping Council

• Bob Van den Berghe, deputy head PCCP, UN Office on Drugs and Crime

• Niels Vanlaer, harbour master at the port of Antwerp-Bruges

• Robert Campbell, programme director, United for Wildlife

Think of a product carried by sea, and the most likely things to come to mind are consumer goods, iron ore, coal, or perhaps even bauxite.

But billions of dollars’ worth of illegal narcotics and thousands of species of animal are carried on cargo and containerships every year and smuggled through the world’s biggest ports, particularly in Europe.

Before analysing how shipping can get a grip on this secret trade, Lloyd’s List reporter Joshua Minchin spoke to several experts leading the fight against smuggling to get an idea of just how big of a problem smuggling is in our industry.

Hear how cartels smuggle consignments of rhino horn by the container load and even threaten crew to force them into transporting kilos of cocaine.

Joining Joshua on the podcast are:

Joe Kramek, chief executive, World Shipping Council

Bob Van den Berghe, deputy head PCCP, UN Office on Drugs and Crime

Niels Vanlaer, harbourmaster at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges

Robert Campbell, programme director, United for Wildlife

Earlier this month, the International Maritime Organization agreed its net zero framework at the 83rd meeting of its Marine Environment Protection Committee.

If you’re not sure what was agreed or the impact it will have on shipping, make sure you listen to our MEPC post-mortem episode of the podcast, which is available here.

A lot of shipping’s decarbonisation chips have been placed on e-fuels.

This is where an electrolyser is used to split hydrogen from water and combine that so-called green hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia, or CO2 to make synthetic methane or methanol.

E-fuels are by far the most expensive option, but they're also seen as the best way to decarbonise the industry in the long term, but not by everyone.

So are we placing far too much stock in e-fuels? Or can they live up to their salvatory status and deliver shipping to net zero in time?

Joining Declan on the podcast this week are:

Michael Liebreich, Bloomber New Energy Finance founder

Dr Tristan Smith, University College London associate professor in energy and transport

Philosophers have for over two millennia debated the irresistible force paradox, usually formulated as ‘What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?’ Variants of the problem date back as far as China in the third century BCE and ancient Greece.

The world got one answer to the question on March 26, 2024, when a Singapore-flagged boxship hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge that spanned Baltimore harbour in the US.

The vessel was inevitably damaged, the bridge collapsed, and six people from a maintenance crew working on the bridge at the time were killed.

Within days, the owners and managers of Dali filed for limitation of liability. If their suit is successful, Grace Ocean, Synergy Marine and their insurers will pay out no more than $44m.

In this edition of the podcast, Lloyd’s List insurance and law editor David Osler unpacks what happens next in what could turn out to be one of the costliest marine casualties of all time.

On Friday, some 20 years of decarbonisation work at the International Maritime Organization culminated in a historic agreement, with countries voting 63-16 in favour of an emissions fuel standard with a built-in carbon price.

If it Is formally adopted in October, this will be the first binding global carbon price on any industry; a genuinely momentous achievement that will change the future of shipping.

What they’ve come up with is highly complex and is going to take the industry a while to fully digest.

But fear not, we have three brave experts willing to help make sense of it and tell us, hopefully, what comes next.

Marie Fricaudet is a senior research fellow at the UCL Energy Institute

Aoife O’Leary is a lawyer, economist, and the chief executive of Opportunity Green

And Rico Luman, a senior sector economist at ING Bank

Richard Buckley named his company 90 Percent of Everything to reflect shipping’s vital role in transporting the vast majority of everything that is traded worldwide. He is convinced that we’re on the threshold of a new way of looking at ship management, based on his experience of developing software to support what he calls ‘Management by Exception’ (MbE)

Even before Donald Trump pronounced the end of gloablisation, the shipping industry was effectively operating in a self-induced state of paralysis.

Uncertainty over a looming trade war, the regulatory cost of carbon and just how long the global current disruption can hide a fundamentally unbalanced shipping market had led executives across the industry to conclude that doing nothing for the moment is likely to be the safest bet they could make.

That pause is now a hard stop.

What occurred last week was not just the US starting a global trade war, or sparking a rout in stock markets. It was the world's hyper power firmly turning its back on the globalisation process it had championed, and from which it handsomely profited in recent decades.

What is president Trump going to do next? What can Europe realistically do in response? Are we going to have peace in the Middle East and is the Red Sea opening anytime soon? Does Russia somehow come in from the cold?

It’s not just clarity from the International Maritime Organization shipowners are searching for now…

Joining Richard on the podcast this week are:

Chris Wiernicki, chief executive of American Bureau of Shipping

Knut Orbeck Nielsen, chief executive of DNV Maritime

Eman Abdalla, global operations director at Cargill Ocean Transportation

Nick Brown, chief executive, Lloyd's Register

Adam Kent, managing director at Maritime Strategies International

WITH geopolitical risk changing seemingly by the day and policy from the world’s biggest economy updated on a weekly (and sometimes hourly) basis, it might seem impossible for the shipping industry to plan long-term.

While this is a sector which thrives on volatility, when assets have 20-year lifespans, some degree of certainty is essential to make prudent long-term decisions.

So how can shipowners decide where to put their money when the ground they shift on is always moving?

Richard Meade led an assembled panel of some of the brightest minds in the industry at Singapore Maritime Week for the latest Lloyd’s List Outlook forum, and in this week’s episode of the podcast we’re bringing you the best bits.

Joining Richard in Singapore were:

Janeyndu Krishna, head of maritime advisors at Drewry

Nick Brown, chief executive at Lloyd’s Register

Eman Abdallah, global operations director at Cargill Ocean Transportation

Mikel Skov, chief executive at Hafnia

Captain Rajesh Unni, founder and chief executive of Synergy Group

This episode of the Lloyd's List Podcast was brought to you by Wirana - visit www.wirana.com/ for more information

GREEN ship finance arrived a few years ago to much fanfare and hope. But times have changed.

Lenders face many of the same hurdles as the rest of shipping: Uncertain regulation and technology, plus a lack of clear standards for what is and isn't green.

But they also have another challenge. Cashed-up shipowners are sitting on piles of pandemic profits and paying back their loans. This means even holding on to a shipping portfolio is a challenge. Fierce competition among lenders has thinned margins, making it harder to offer borrowers much of a discount for greener goals.

President Trump is back in; ESG investing is out. Or is it?

Joining Declan on the podcast this week are:

Jan-Henrik Huebner, global head of shipping advisory practice, DNV Maritime

Tobias Backer, executive director, Pelagic Capital