Learning by Training

by Arend van Campen

IS IT GOOD OR BAD TO POLLUTE THE ENVIRONMENT?

A WHILE BACK I was copied into an ongoing email exchange about degassing i.e. ventilating chemical vapours such as benzene from inland tank barges into the environment. A barge captain wrote an open letter to everyone concerned: authorities, freight forwarders, charterers, tanker owners, terminal operators, municipalities and the Dutch Ministry of the Environment. I translated some parts with emphasis on the issue at hand to tell you how frustrated this skipper had become about the disinterest at all levels to stop this environmental catastrophe, which at the time of writing, lingers on:

Dear interested person!

I’ve had it....! Do you recognise that feeling? The injustice that is regularly done to people. Injustice, which is done to the inhabitants of Groningen for financial reasons, but also the injustice done to the ship’s crew by not informing them what they are transporting. Nonsense spread by politicians, executives and other people in charge, of which the citizens are once again the victims. Nonsense that the emission of very harmful and environmentally hazardous substances has no demonstrable negative effects on our Natura 2000 areas, as the Minister has said. Nonsense that the increasing drafting of safety rules and procedures will reduce the number of incidents, without ever tackling the structural cause of the problems. Incompetence, due to a lack of pragmatism on the part of officials, as a result of which, for example, the granting of permits for closed degassing installations has stagnated for years, and as a result of which the environment is harmed completely unnecessarily year after year. Incompetence, by not enforcing something, because the enforcer apparently does not know the law. The list is endless. So I looked at this matter, thought about it and responded:

As a business ethicist and trainer in the HSEQ - Human Factors and Behaviour Based Safety area, I often use Immanuel Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’: ‘Would you want to live in a world where everyone would allow this act (degassing)?’ If not, then stop doing it.

This is about human behaviour. If you do decide, under pressure from a steady job and income, to pollute the environment (and thus yourself), is that good or bad, right or wrong? By using rhetorical questioning techniques, we can make an ethical decision together as an industry, which will be positive interdependent (benefit for all) instead of negative interdependent (benefit for some, but at the expense of environment, health, life expectancy etc).

Sectors that fail to effectively implement information processes and internal control systems are likely to face an information deficit at some point, resulting in deteriorating performance. Understanding how information deficits lead to entropy or disorder is critical to running an effective and safe industry. It means that the information (everyone knows) about the fact that the environment is polluted is real. What I can advise is to use this information (as e.g. offered by the skipper) to make the corrections from within the sector itself, so that the system (inland tanker shipping) can continue without causing harm to people and the environment any longer.

This is the latest in a monthly series of articles by Arend van Campen, founder of TankTerminalTraining, who can be contacted at arendvc@ tankterminaltraining.com. More information on the company’s activities can be found at www.tankterminaltraining.com.