CCH - Congress Center Hamburg - News
Hamburg Messe und Congress sets “green” course for the environment and sustainability World’s first maritime environment summit, in parallel to SMM 2010
Hamburg, 15 Sept. 2009. Hamburg will be the location for the first global maritime
summit of the maritime industry. For two days, industry experts from all over the
world will attend the Global Maritime Environmental Congress (GMEC) to discuss
developments, to present results, and to set a new course for sustainable green
shipping. Patronage for this event, which is to be held regularly in future, has been
accepted by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The industry is taking environmental protection seriously. The Global Maritime Environmental Congress (GMEC) will be the first high-ranking conference dedicated exclusively to issues of environmental protection in the maritime industry. From 7 to 8 September 2010, more than 700 leading representatives from industry, government, academia, navies, tourism and environmental protection will meet in Hamburg to discuss specific solutions for environmentfriendly, sustainable shipping. The three Chairmen of the event, that is Micky Arison, Corrado Antonini and Spyros Polemis, are among the top names in international shipping. “We have a total commitment to protect the maritime environment, to use resources more efficiently, and to do more than what is required by the statutory international environmental requirements,” says Micky Arison, Chairman of Carnival Corporation, the largest cruising company in the world, who is also Chairman of GMEC. “Hamburg, which is the European Green Capital 2011, is the ideal place to establish GMEC as a platform for the first regular environmental conference of its kind,” says Bernd Aufderheide, President and CEO of Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH.
GMEC – Focusing worldwide environment protection activities
GMEC will make a major contribution to achieving the worldwide goals. That is evident from
the packed schedule of the conference, addressing subjects such as green design and
building for passenger vessels, navy and merchant ships, and their operation and
subsequent recycling. It will come up with solutions to energy and emission problems at sea,
the use of innovative propulsion concepts, and requirements for modern waste management,
and provide answers to questions of environmental protection in ports and regional maritime
areas.
These considerations are not taking the industry into uncharted waters – shipbuilding
companies in particular have put forward innovative solutions in recent years, to deal with
increasing scarcity of resources and rising economic challenges. But now, for the first time,
an international conference will focus efforts in this area, and bring together the world’s
leading designers, manufacturers and users of maritime industrial technology, and
representatives of governments and environmental protection organisations, for exchange of
views.
The new conference provides the ideal setting, with Hamburg as its venue, and with its
timing during SMM 2010, the world’s leading ship building fair, with nearly 2,000 exhibitors
and more than 52,000 trade visitors.
“The conference is vitally important,” says Corrado Antonini, CEO of Fincantieri, Italy’s
largest shipbuilding company, and also a member of the Board of GMEC, “because the
development of innovative, efficient technologies is essential to the future of the whole of the
maritime industry.”
GMEC will produce concrete results
This conference, to be held every two years in future, is organised by Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH in cooperation with Jochen Deerberg, Owner and CEO of the world’s leading maritime equipment supplier of waste treatment and disposal systems. “GMEC will not just be for show,” promises Jochen Deerberg, “but will take up the challenges and opportunities of environmental protection and sustainability, generate new inputs for the whole of the maritime industry, and produce concrete results.”
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