"Superyacht Industry should not exist," is the core message of Extinction Rebellion in protest to the superyacht industry in the last two editions of the Superyacht Forum. "Billionaires should not exist," is the message of Extinction Rebellion supporters in Barcelona after spray-painting m/y KAOS for the second time. Allow me to add a third quote, this time from one of my favourite writers, the late Kurt Vonnegut: "We (humans) are terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should."
Depending on the level we detach ourselves from being directly involved, each of these statements holds some truth. However, do these statements offer a practical solution to solve the ecological crisis in real life? Do any of these inspire you to take a real, valuable action to mitigate or reverse our impact on nature?
"Climate doomerism backfires. It's good for getting clicks and social media attention, but it's not effective in making progress in policies and taking action. In fact, it erodes action," this is how Frans Schepers, Co-Founder of Rewilding Europe , summarizes a study of Science Advances about the perceptions of messaging about the climate crisis. He offers his main takeaway: "We need to move away from an anxiety narrative 😬 and work towards an empowerment narrative 💪🏽 - that engages and mobilizes people to care and take positive action 🌿. From parliaments and corporate boardrooms, to civil society movements and individual people."
I will openly admit that the statements in this article's opening paragraph resonate with me. They resonate because I acknowledge the problem, and the more I learn about the topic of human-caused nature depletion and biodiversity loss, the more I understand the cause of the problem. So, what are the options? Should I quit my business in the superyacht industry and start spray painting superyachts in protest? Honestly, I guess hardly anyone would care about it, and my business place would be quickly taken. But most importantly, the chance to impact and change the "business as usual" would be lost.
The other, much more powerful, alternative is to be part of the change within the industry. Starting with ourselves, with improvements day by day. Investigating the best initiatives, supporting, and implementing them, and empowering others to follow. This is the reason why I particularly want to highlight the Environmental Crew Guidelines prepared by Danella Hopkins and the Water Revolution Foundation (link to download in comments). This document is a must-read (and implement) for every crew member on any superyacht around the globe. Equally vital, this document is for every shore-based business serving superyachts. The importance lies in commonly accepted principles for crew and shoreside suppliers, which both can follow and implement. Because it is impossible to implement this only by crew or only by shoreside suppliers.
"Hi Kris, sorry for the last-minute request, but we need lamb for lunch. Would you be able to source and deliver 7kgs by noon?" a late morning message from a Chef on a superyacht. At this point, the daily provisioning request is already delivered onboard. Our runner jumps in the car to go source the meat to deliver that on time according to the chef's request. The delivery is already halfway to the yacht when the next message arrives: "Sorry, could you please add to that 1.5kg of feta and some 5 packs of arugula?"
The conversation above is a typical workday for us, a small boutique superyacht concierge and agency business. Even on the small island of Mallorca, those two extra last minute deliveries might add an additional 150km of mileage and result in approximately 20 kg of CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, these are not isolated cases, but this happens daily. With the average 100 days of the season, this will sum up to 2 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Emissions that can be easily avoided with better procurement planning on board.
Although we love last-minute solutions and this is one of our core strengths crew appreciate the most, we encourage the crew to carefully plan all orders in advance so that we can consolidate deliveries. This is the first real action we invite yacht crew to do to reduce environmental impact. And, by the way, also to reduce the agency bill.
Planning to visit a Spanish ports this season? Download and familiarise with Environmental Crew Guidelines and reach out to us at info@iberianyachtsolutions.com. Let's work on your itinerary together not only for the ultimate guest experience but also to look how to do it in the least harmfull way for the nature.
And, yes, there's no need to send us an Eco-Galley Provisioning letter. We are already working to implement the solutions.
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