The lack of progress and low ambition shown at this week’s round of negotiations to reduce shipping’s contribution to the climate crisis is deeply concerning and disappointing, the Clean Shipping Coalition (CSC) has said.
Two years after agreeing its initial greenhouse gas strategy, a meeting of the UN maritime agency, the IMO, did little more than review options already on the table and gave far too much time to technical measures that will deliver too little too late, notes CSC.
There was however widespread acceptance by IMO member states and industry that ship speed is one of the most important factors affecting GHG emissions, and the CSC’s ship speed proposal is among those proposals for operational measures to be taken forward.
“The importance of speed reduction in cutting ship GHG emissions in the short-term is woven into the fabric of many of the proposed measures,” said John Maggs, senior policy advisor at Seas at Risk.
“The challenge as we go forward is to ensure that this most straight-forward of approaches is taken up and implemented in such a way that all ships contribute speed-related emissions savings.”
Japan and Norway’s proposed measure to certify ships that limit their engine power – though the limit can easily be reversed – is unambitious, opaque, and susceptible to cheating, notes CSC.
Crucially, it won’t achieve the urgent and deep cuts in emissions that are necessary if shipping is to respond appropriately to the climate emergency.
“The IMO spent yet another week talking the talk without deciding anything except to kick the can further down the road,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping policy manager at Transport & Environment.
“Everything is slow at the IMO, except for polluting ships, and this needs to change. With Norway and Japan’s proposal, the IMO is being blown off course and will achieve nothing more than ‘greenwashing’ of world shipping.”
Dan Hubbell, shipping emissions campaign manager at Ocean Conservancy, said: “There is a real risk that when developing measures the IMO aims only to achieve the floor of targets set on an unambitious baseline. The IMO must follow the science and aim for full decarbonisation of the shipping sector by 2050 at the latest, and that makes some measures more appropriate than others.”
Related: ‘Clock is ticking’ for IMO to launch emissions reduction measures
Related: Decreasing vessel speeds offer ‘false impression’ of GHG reductions
Related: Shipping CEOs agree on mandatory speed measure for vessels
Related: UK Chamber of Shipping supports ‘ambitious’ GHG reduction strategy
Photo credit: International Maritime Organization
Published: 19 November, 2019
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