![]() Read more: The Cruise Industry Is On a Course For Climate Disaster But let’s be clear that this was not transparent, just, or equitable and it is reflected in the result reached.” “The Pacific brought it back from the brink. “In typical IMO fashion there was delay tactics in working groups while the real inaction happened behind closed doors where many were excluded until the final hour and in front of a near ultimatum,” said Lucy Gilliam, senior shipping policy officer at European environmental NGO Seas at Risk. Others were less positive about the result. Some observers cited the change as a win. The upper bound of the targets the IMO did adopt, a 30% emission cut by 2030 and an 80% cut by 2040, were only put in place thanks to the last minute push by small island nations on July 6. That level of ambition would have kept the sector on track to do its part in keeping global temperature rise at around 1.5☌. But instead of actually being referred to as firm targets, the final agreement ambiguously refers to them as “indicative checkpoints.” They’re also lower than what the Pacific Island countries and their bloc of supporters were pushing for: 37% emissions reductions in the sector by 2030 and a 96% reduction by 2040. The IMO agreement does include new shorter-term targets that would cut emissions by 20-30% by 2030 and 70-80% by 2040. They would also provide a clear market signal for international shipping companies to put more investment into green technologies, and production and distribution infrastructure for zero emission fuels. Climate advocates say that those near-term targets are essential to making sure the longer-term goals are actually achieved. One of the crucial points of contention in the negotiations were whether the new IMO greenhouse gas strategy would include interim 20 emissions targets in advance of a final 2050 goal. Rising sea levels caused by climate change are threatening those small island nations’ existence, while developing countries like India and Brazil have historically been opposed to stronger shipping emissions requirements, out of fear that the limits could hurt their export-dependent economies. The body very nearly agreed to a weaker compromise, before a last day push by delegations from small island states like Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands, with support from developed nations like the U.K., succeeded in winning concessions from developing countries. Much of the IMO negotiations in recent weeks were carried out in small group sessions, which made it difficult for some national delegations to get their perspective heard. Read more: We’re Gonna Need a Greener Boat Faïg Abbasov, Shipping programme director of European sustainability NGO Transport and Environment, called the deal a “wishy-washy compromise.” “Aside from FIFA, it’s hard to think of an international organization more useless than the IMO,” he said on Thursday, after a draft agreement was released. The targets will be up for discussion again in five years, but many environmentalists say that by then it will be too late to change the sector’s emissions trajectory before 2050. “It is in many ways a starting point for the work that needs to intensify even more over the years and decades ahead of us.”īut many observers in the international climate community were furious over the outcome, saying the IMO has failed to bring future emissions from the world’s oceangoing vessels in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, particularly because their agreement lacks a firm 2050 deadline. After pressure to address emissions intensified, the group’s member states came out with a 2018 agreement that would aim to cut emissions by half by 2050, a significant step, but still far from the complete decarbonization that scientists say will be necessary within three decades to avert catastrophic climate change.Ĭurrent IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim called the agreement struck in London today “monumental.” “It is not the end goal,” he added. “Such measures would artificially limit the ability of shipping to meet the demand created by the world economy,” he said. But in the lead up to the Paris Agreement back in 2015, then-IMO Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu told world diplomats that the sector should not be subject to any overall emissions limits. Global shipping is responsible for about 3% of global emissions. agency assigned to regulate the cruise liners, container ships, and bulk cargo carriers that operate on the high seas beyond the authority of any one country, has been another story. But the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. The United Nations has long been a powerful force in the fight against climate change.
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