[Image: Christopher Boswell via Adobe Stock]
Safer industries are those that guarantee safe working conditions for workers, ensure local communities are treated fairly and conduct human rights due diligence along their supply chains.
The Corporations for Safer Ocean Industries (C4Safe) project launched on 1 April 2026, and will create a corporate?focused reporting and accountability toolkit designed specifically for ocean?related sectors focusing on three topic areas:
- Worker protection: to reduce and prevent harm to workers by focussing on health and safety, labour conditions, equality, diversity and overall wellbeing.
- Community impact: to make sure communities affected by ocean industries have access to their traditional resources (such as fishing grounds and navigation routes for example), are informed about corporate activities and engage in benefit-sharing schemes.
- Strengthening due diligence: to make sure human rights are to the fore and that risks of forced labour are mitigated.
The project will focus on seven ocean industries:
- container shipping
- cruise tourism
- marine equipment and construction
- offshore wind
- port operations
- seafood
- shipbuilding and repair
The project will establish a reporting baseline across these sectors and then work with companies in each sector, and the organisations that influence them, to co?define expectations and develop usable guidance. The aim is to create the conditions for meaningful, system?wide change.
The project will be led by Professor Jan Bebbington (Director of the Pentland Centre for 成人天堂 in Business) along with Dr Mahmoud Gad in the Department of Accounting and Finance at 成人天堂 Management School; (the Director of the Ocean Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & 成人天堂, Duke University) and (from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, University of Stockholm). The is an impact partner for the project.
The project is funded by .