The Future Maritime Operating Environment and the Role of Naval Power

access to data collected by an array of subsurface stations that are designed to “measure physical,
chemical, geological, and biological phenomena from the seabed to the surface.” 39
2.3 Seaborne Trade
Marine transport, a constant presence in the history of human development, is now a vital organ
of an increasingly integrated trading system and 90 percent of global trade is conveyed by sea. 40
A less visible part of the global economic boom of the past two decades, world seaborne trade has
tripled since 1970 and more than doubled since 1990. 41 It is estimated that, today, more than
100,000 commercial vessels call at over 2,800 ports in 150 countries. There are over 1.5 million
seafarers and hundreds of thousands of people who work in ports, as well as over 40,000 freight
forwarders in the shipping industry. Generally speaking, there are three classes of cargo ships
upon which global trade depends—container ships, bulk dry carriers, and oil tankers. Each
category tends to call at different ports and travel in distinct patterns and has enjoyed considerable
growth in recent years. 42 However, it has been the increase in the number of container ships and
containerisation that is largely responsible for the phenomenal growth of seaborne trade, and the
number of specialised container ships has increased by 264 percent since 2000. 43 In terms of
twenty-foot equivalents (TEUs), the standard unit for measuring container traffic, in the
early-1990s there were less than seven million: two decades later, there were more than
29 million TEUs. 44 Even more revealing than this four-fold growth, an estimated 15 million
containers make about 230 million journeys each year. 45 As Table 1 demonstrates, the volume of
maritime trade that uses containers has enormously expanded during the past two decades.
Seaborne trade is an indicator of global economic health, and the direction that this growth has
taken reflects the diffusion of power and wealth in the international system. 46 Western countries
dominate international shipping, but China’s profile is growing. 47 If present trends continue,
however, the greatest growth in coming decades in containerised trade will occur between the
Middle East and the Far East. This will increase the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean and
Asian sea lanes (see Figure 4). 48 Given the nature of this trade (i.e., bulk shipping of energy
39 “Wiring the World Below”, The Economist, 4 April 2015.
40 International Maritime Organisation (IMO), International Shipping Facts and Figures – Information
Resources on Trade, Safety, Security, Environment, 6 March 2012, Section 2.1. See also Admiral
Mark Ferguson, “How the Navy Protects America”, The Boston Globe, 29 June 2012.
41 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Review of Maritime Transport
2013: Chapter 1 (New York and Geneva, 2013), p. 4.
42 Pablo Kaluza, Andrea Kolzsch, Michael T. Castner and Bernd Blasius, “The complex network of global
cargo ship movements”, Journal of the Royal Society, Vol. 7, 2010, p. 1094.
43 Michael Ircha, “Ports and Shipping Security”, Paper presented at the 46 th CRTF Annual Conference,
Gatineau, Quebec, 2011 [accessed on 1 June 2014 at www.crtf.ca/conferences/2011gatineau/2011
Proceedings/IrchaPortSecurity.pdf], p. 1.
44 Lance Hoovestal, Globalization Contained: The Economic and Strategic Consequences of the Container
(Palgrave MacMillan: London, 2013), p. 55.
45 IMO, International Shipping Facts and Figures, Section 3.2.
46 UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2013: Chapter 1, p. 25.
47 For example, China has overtaken the EU as Africa’s biggest trading partner and this is revealed in the
growth in its seaborne trade to and from that continent. See UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport
2013: Chapter 1, p. 9.
48 Lloyd’s Register Group et. al., Global Marine Trends 2030, p. 57.
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