‘BRAT’ may have topped the word of the year lists elsewhere, but in shipping, lexicographers looking to capture the zeitgeist should be focused on the use of ‘pragmatism’ as the buzzword of the year.

Shipping’s ‘brat summer’ was spent redefining the term to mean ‘an end to the unrealistic promises of the past’. A closing of the gap between rhetoric and reality, if you will.

The phrase was specifically used in relation to the growing disconnect between the green agenda and the decisions being taken at board level. 

‘We need to take a pragmatic view of the market’, generally meant holding off on any substantive green investment as an ESG backlash played out over the summer amid political and economic uncertainties.

But language evolves — and surprisingly quickly in shipping, it seems. 

It is no longer simply a euphemism for inaction and delay; the calls for pragmatism are more specific and more focused on the detail of what happens next year.

In the run-up to the International Maritime Organization agreeing net zero carbon targets for 2050, there were a surprising number of people convinced it was never going to happen. There is now a grudging acceptance that a dramatic regulatory shift is all but inevitable, so the focus is making that shift a pragmatic one. 

Nobody wants to see flawed regulation in the mould of the Carbon Intensity Indicator. If change is afoot, let it be ‘pragmatic’.

If the IMO can set fuel standards and carbon pricing at a level that is more aligned with reality and achievable, argues the newly established Hong Kong Chamber of Shipping chairman Hing Chao in our lead interview today, it will be one of the most crucial means for the industry to reach net zero by 2050.

But let’s see how China pragmatically aligns its own 2060 targets with the IMO’s 2050 ambition. Let’s see how the EU narrative lines up with what the IMO agrees internationally. Let’s see if the carbon pricing is sufficient to spur zero-carbon fuel supplies into existence via investment decisions. And let’s see who moves first — and at what pace. 

Pragmatism is an approach that evaluates theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application. In that respect, the word ‘pragmatism’ is back to being used with a more traditional definition.

When you read pragmatism in statements now, it generally means ‘let’s wait and see what happens next’.

Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List

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