Centering communities and rights holders to create a sustainable and equitable marine shipping sector

We work to build a decarbonized maritime industry that focuses on human rights, ocean health, and climate equity.

Creating a Path to Equity

We prioritize the needs and perspectives of communities and rights holders, working in collaboration with regulators and industry leaders to drive positive change in the shipping sector.

Offers

Facilitating maritime solutions through community empowerment

Build Capacity

We build capacity for a sustainable and equitable maritime industry by strengthening the skills, knowledge, and resources of individuals, communities, rights holders, industry and organizations.

Research & Development

We use research to identify gaps and challenges in the maritime industry and develop evidence-based solutions. Research insights are turned into practical solutions that incentivize sustainable practices and address stakeholders' and rights holders' concerns. This includes supporting the development of policies and regulations and building capacity in communities and organizations for sustainable practices and advocacy.

Organize & Empower

We work with the communities and stakeholders directly impacted by the maritime industry's practices. We endeavor to create spaces for dialogue and collaboration, facilitating participatory decision-making processes, and building the capacity of communities, rights holders, and organizations to effectively advocate for their rights and concerns.

Our Values

Our work towards a sustainable, equitable and decarbonized maritime industry is guided by three key principles:

Human-Rights Approach

We prioritize supporting the demands and leadership of communities disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis, shipping impacts, and pollution. We believe in using a human-rights approach and an equity lens to address their needs and concerns.

Evidence-Based Knowledge

We recognize that knowledge is generated in many ways. Therefore, we support evidence-based information and integrative science, including the latest scientific data, cultural knowledge, and Indigenous ways of knowing, to foster more holistic narratives.

Transparency & Accountability

We use creative strategies to ensure that all information disseminated is transparent, credible, and accessible for the general public, policymakers, financial institutions, and the shipping industry to make informed decisions. Through transparency, accountability is built.

Our Team

Territorial Acknowledgement & Commitment to Decolonization

Equal Routes acknowledges the role of global shipping in the historical and ongoing genocide and colonization that has led to the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands and waters. Embedded over centuries, our modern maritime governance frameworks cannot be untangled from these complex histories of colonialism and imperialism. We continue to deconstruct the deep-rooted participation of the maritime shipping industry that supports and profits from the enslavement of people and the stealing of land, food, resources, and culture.

Equal Routes is committed to interrogating our own prejudices and those of the people we work with. We actively advocate for maritime governance and operations rooted in customary values and practices, centering equity and local solutions within the broader context of global shipping. We invite corrections and learnings to ensure we are not complicit in perpetuating a legacy of Indigenous marine dispossession, and to better understand the role our organization can play in fostering equitable maritime practices.

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