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On November 28th, 2019 ICS Canada held a lunch talk in Montreal. The topic was “Global forecasts of shipping traffic and biological invasions to 2050” and we were honoured to have Professor Brian Leung from the Biology Department at McGill University as our speaker.

Professor Leung started his presentation by describing his scientific approach to the problem and gave an overview of what we mean by “invasive species”. He then built a statistical model to forecast the volume and pattern of marine transportation and its impact on the spread of invasive species. He then concluded with some comments on management & policy. The main take-aways were that invasions could increase by orders of magnitude, that Northeast Asia was of particular concern and that socioeconomic drivers might be a more important driver of invasions than climate change. From a policy point of view, Prof Leung mentioned that measures such as the Ballast Water Management Convention while perhaps imperfect, were important steps in the right direction.

A copy of the academic paper on which Prof Leung’s presentation was based is available here:  http://biology.mcgill.ca/faculty/leung/articles/Sardain_et_al_Nature_Sust_2019.pdf

The event was well-attended with strong representation from ship operator Fednav, maritime lawyers Brisset Bishop, DMSP Law, Deman Pillet & Borden Ladner Gervais, average adjuster Braden Marine, Transport Canada as well students from ICS & the Shipping Federation of Canada. Judging from the many questions asked at the end of the talk, I believe everyone appreciated hearing about the important environmental topic from a scientific perspective and were impressed by the care with which Prof Leung’s research was done and presented.

ICS Canada thanks the speaker and participants for making the event a success! As with all our lunch talks, we hope to provide an opportunity to network and learn over a enjoyable lunch. As always, we are grateful to the Shipping Federation of Canada for allowing us to use their boardroom and for their support!

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