Twelve environmental non-governmental organizations, led by Clean Shipping Coalition have sent a letter to EU Climate Ministers to express concerns regarding the failure of the international community to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping.
Environmentalists claim that IMO missed a historic chance to properly address emissions from international shipping during its 68th session of Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) held in mid-May. At that session, the Foreign Minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) introduced a proposal and a call for the adoption of a reduction target for GHG emissions from international shipping.
This proposal represented a loud wake-up call to the international community but it only took the IMO 90 minutes to reject the matter, despite evidence that failure to cap a fast growing source of emissions such as international shipping will endanger the 2 degree target, the letter states.
According to the letter: ” This failure is all the more remarkable given that the EU is on record at the UNFCCC calling for the IMO to establish a target consistent with the 2 degree objective. The RMI, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and the Solomons all took the risk to come to London and reclaim their IMO seats from the pro-industry ship registries that usually occupy them, expecting and having been promised support from Europe. This was a genuinely historic moment in the long 18-year battle since Kyoto to have the IMO properly address emissions from international shipping. But leading European states including Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland evidently decided to digress from the agreed EU position clearly expressed by Latvia, France, Belgium, Poland and others, by implicitly favouring work on data collection with no indication as to when or how work to agree a global cap might merit attention. Their equivocal support was a signal for lukewarm responses from the US, Australia and Japan which turned into outright opposition from the BRICs and others.’’
Apart from setting out the emissions reduction target by 2016, the letter urges the EU parties the following actions at UNFCCC and IMO level:
- Preserve and strengthen the EU language on international aviation and shipping emissions in the UNFCCC negotiation text for incorporation in the Paris Agreement at the end of this year;
- The IMO must agree a global emissions reduction target in 2016;
- Submit proposals for a global ship emissions cap for consideration at MEPC 69, the next session.
- Support Pacific Island States to continue their initiative to cap shipping emissions;
Support additional finance through measures for shipping emissions reductions for mitigation and adaptation actions in the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
You may read the letter by clicking below:
Source: Clean Shipping Coalition
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