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Steps taken by the international maritime community have paid off, reducing the threat of piracy in the Arabian Sea’s Gulf of Aden, according to the Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty Safety and Shipping Review 2014. The number of ships seized and hostages taken was down significantly in 2013. According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), piracy at sea is at the lowest level in six years—264 attacks were recorded worldwide in 2013, a 40%drop since Somali piracy peaked in 2011. There were 15 incidents reported off Somalia in 2013, including Gulf of Aden and Red Sea incidents—down from 75 in 2012, and 237 in 2011 (including attacks attributed to Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and Oman).
But while the number of incidents in this region has gone down, piracy attacks in other areas have increased in frequency, notably Indonesia and off the west coast of Africa. While most of these Indonesian attacks remain local, low level opportunistic thefts carried out by small bands of individuals, a third of the incidents in these waters were reported in the last quarter of 2013, meaning there is potential for such attacks to escalate into a more organized piracy model unless they are controlled.
The Gulf of Guinearegion accounted for 48 of the 264 incidents in 2013. Of these, Nigerian pirates and armed robbers were responsible for 31 incidents, including two hijackings, 13 vessel boardings and 13 vessels fired upon. One crew member was killed and 36 kidnapped—the highest number of Nigerian kidnappings for five years, according to the IMB.
Pirates remain a notable risk for businesses that involve maritime activities like shipping for supply or distribution. While it’s easy to dismiss the idea with images of wooden ships, gangplanks and a thoroughly unwashed Johnny Depp, the face of piracy has changed, but it has far from disappeared.
In the last decade, increased pirate activity out of war-torn Somalia have drawn considerable media attention, especially as hundreds of ships were attacked and dozens hijacked and their crews held hostage. Pirates earned an average of $4.87 million per ship in 2011, a huge financial toll for businesses that was only compounded by rising need for kidnap and random insurance for crews.
Yet the Horn of Africa and the Suez Canal are not the most perilous seas. Australia’s News Limited reported, “Shipping industry figures show that the waters around Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula is the world’s hotspot for pirates.
” The International Maritime Bureau found that Indonesia has experienced a more than 50% surge in pirate attacks in the first half of 2013. Of the 48 attacks reported, 43 involved pirates boarding vessels and assaulting the crew. West Africa has also grown as a hotspot, and the Control Risks RiskMap Maritime 2013 also highlighted high conflict potential at sea off South Korea, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.
Some experts are turning to more creative measures to ward off pirates, Time magazine reported this week. To deter pirates from approaching supertankers off the east coast of Africa, merchant navy officer Rachel Owens said ships have begun blasting the musical stylings of Britney Spears.
“Her songs were chosen by the security team because they thought the pirates would hate them most,” Owens said. “These guys can’t stand Western culture or music, making Britney’s hits perfect.”
It’s a colorful approach to consider, especially as Hollywood turns a spotlight on mismanaged pirate attacks with the new Tom Hanks movie “Captain Phillips.” Let’s just not take it too far – as Steven Jones, of the Security Association for the Maritime Industry, told Time, “I’d imagine using Justin Bieber would be against the Geneva Convention.”
In discussing the risks of water scarcity and quality over the past year (here, here and here), our attention has mostly focused on the developed world. By and large, we have talked about the risks that companies will have to deal with as these realities become more dire in the future.
The United Nations, however, naturally sees water risks through a different prism, particularly during its World Water Week, which started yesterday with a mission to increase awareness of a growing global water crisis affecting billions of people. Much of its advocacy and fundraising to provide better — and just more — water to children who lack access is being done by its UNICEF Tap Project.
In 2007, the UNICEF Tap Project was born in New York City based on a simple concept: restaurants would ask their patrons to donate $1 or more for the tap water they usually enjoy for free, and all funds raised would support UNICEF’s efforts to bring clean and accessible water to millions of children around the world.
Growing from just 300 New York City restaurants in 2007 to thousands across the country today, the UNICEF Tap Project has quickly become a powerful national movement.
During World Water Week, March 21-27, 2010, the UNICEF Tap Project will once again raise awareness of the world water crisis and vital funds to help the millions of children it impacts daily. All funds raised support UNICEF’s water, sanitation and hygiene programs, and the effort to bring clean and accessible water to millions of children around the world.
For more on the Tap Project, check out his video, which manages to be both very depressing and very uplifting all in the span of five minutes.
Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease – 1.8 million children younger than five years each year. This alarming figure is from a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which says millions of tonnes of solid waste are being flushed into water systems every day, spreading disease.
“More than two billion tonnes of wastewater are being flushed into our fresh water and oceans every day, every year,” Christian Nelleman, the lead author of the report, Sick Water?, told IRIN.
The wastewater, a cocktail of agricultural and industrial runoffs and sewage, was seeping into groundwater and polluting drinking sources, like wells, in low-lying areas where the bulk of the world’s population live.
Countries should not only invest in infrastructure to manage wastewater but also in ecosystems, for instance by replanting mangroves, which acted as natural filters in coastal areas, said Nelleman.
The devastating earthquake in Haiti last January claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, making it one of the biggest single natural disasters this year.
But in contrast, some 3.6 million people — including 1.5 million children — are estimated to die each year from water-related diseases, including diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery.
As the United Nations commemorates World Water Day next week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says clean water has become scarce and will become even scarcer with the onset of climate change.
“More people die from unsafe water than all forms of violence, including war,” he said in a statement released Thursday.
Troubling stuff.
And something we all need to work to remedy — both for the sake of our economy and our humanity. (h/t to Ideas for Africa for the links. Follow them for more interesting water stories throughout the week.)
This year’s World Cup will be held in South Africa, with up to half a million visitors expected to flock to the country. That means big money for much of South Africa’s businesses, and it also means big business for the country’s sex workers.
This poses many problems, the most worrisome, however, is that up to half of the area’s prostitutes are carrying HIV.
Eric Harper, director of the Cape Town-based Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), told CNN that the World Cup would inevitably lead to a demand for sex workers.”And where there’s demand there will be a supply,” Harper told CNN. “It could be a potential recipe for disaster both for the clients and the sex workers,” he added. Harper told CNN that while there are no accurate figures for the number of sex workers in South Africa, his organization believes there are 3,000 in Cape Town alone.
The above article references a 2005 University of Michigan study that found that 46% of female sex workers in Johannesburg had HIV. Though that amounts to one scary statistic, authorities are also worried about the possible spread of other STDs, the chance of unwanted pregnancies and the threat of rape.
Currently, prostitution is illegal in South Africa. Some are calling for the legalization of the crime to help curb the spread of the disease.
It seems these pro-prostitution advocates are taking their example from the well-known Red Light District of Amsterdam. There, prostitution is indeed legal and those employed in the lucrative industry are rigorously tested and protection is used to ensure the safety of both parties. And as with all legal industries, it is taxed.
Should South Africa decriminalize prostitution to help tackle the spread of HIV? One might think so. It has been well documented that HIV has had a serious impact on the country’s economy. South Africa has the chance to turn one extremely risky, illegal occupation to a revenue-generating, safe industry. What do you think?
