At least one small island state delegate was left with “mixed feelings” and an ambitious set of net-zero targets was left on the cutting room floor as delegates to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) reached a compromise emission reductions agreement Friday.
Reducing Emissions
The maritime shipping industry carries more than 80% of global trade and, in doing so, produces more greenhouse gas emissions each year than Germany. But despite its outsized climate impact, the industry’s ambition for cutting emissions through regulation has been sorely lacking. When world leaders met in 2015 to lay out international climate targets under the Paris agreement, aiming to limit average global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, shipping industry emissions were left out. After the latest round of talks, “the targets are less ambitious than those that international bodies including the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) consider compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C,” and no one agreed to anything legally binding. But “the agreement sends a signal to the industry on the direction of travel,” Climate Home writes. “Future work is planned to set out concrete measures that aim to reduce emissions, for example by introducing more climate-friendly fuel standards.”
The decision to set “indicative checkpoints” rather than firm, ambitious emission targets for 2030 and 2040, drew scathing criticism from civil society experts following the talks. The final outcome was “the latest example of a pattern of behavior at the IMO, where climate and environment issues are addressed but not adequately responded to,” the Clean Shipping Coalition said in a release. “There is no excuse for this wish and a prayer agreement,” said coalition president and veteran shipping emissions analyst John Maggs.
Tax On Shipping Emissions?
Climate Home says the negotiations pitted small island states and rich countries seeking faster, deeper emission cuts against large emerging countries, especially from Latin and South America, that were concerned about constraining global trade and harming their economies by making shipping more expensive. In the end, despite resistance, delegates agreed to look into a tax on shipping emissions, “although how much the tax should be and how the money should be spent will be fought over at future meetings.” When it was all over, a delegate from Tuvalu declared himself “very disappointed with a strategy which falls short of what we needed,” while a Marshall Islands delegate said there’s still “much work to do to make sure 1.5 remains not just within reach, but a reality.” India expressed concern about “unrealistic targets”, while the United States countered that the agreement was “ambitious but also feasible”.
Earlier in the negotiations, delegates received a visit from Poseidon, the mythical god of the ocean, who dropped by the meeting site “accompanied by two desperate, dripping, merpeople” as international delegates “sipped their drinks and munched on canapés to celebrate the first day of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee,” Ocean Rebellion said in a release. The IMO did take a slow, halting step toward regulation last year when it implemented a new rule requiring ships to calculate a carbon intensity index, though that requirement has been criticized by several countries. Although successfully introduced air pollution requirements to reduce sulfur emissions in 2020, those actions have not translated into success in limiting climate pollution, says Carbon Brief.
“More ambitious climate targets are fine. But the problem is that the IMO doesn’t even have the political instruments needed to achieve its former objectives,” Hansen said. “We need to understand why the IMO is so short on success in this area. Because if nothing happens, this enormous industry will account for a larger and larger share of global CO2 emissions.” Changes in shipping costs are indeed likely to affect small island developing states and least developed countries to a greater degree because of their reliance on imports—they already pay around double what developing countries do for the transportation of traded items. Advocates for a just and equitable transition are therefore calling for effective policies to offset those impacts in any decarbonization targets the MEPC sets, states the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
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Source: Theenergymix
