According to the 28th annual State of the Climate report, 2017 was the third warmest year on record for the globe, behind 2016 and 2015. The planet also experienced record-high greenhouse gas concentrations as well as rises in sea level, while Arctic maximum sea ice coverage fell to a record low.
The Great Barrier Reef could be hit with repeat coral bleaching events every two years by 2034 under current greenhouse gas pollution rates, according to a new report by Climate Council, revealing that accelerating climate change has driven a 54% increase in the number of marine heatwave days each year.
IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim attended the IHMA harbour masters congress, whose theme was “Ports: Essential for Safe, Efficient and Secure Global Trade”. During his speech, he highlighted the crucial role of harbour masters in ensuring the safe arrival and departure of ships and making the ship-port interface work efficiently.
The GHG footprint of LNG is worse than this of the current conventional fuels, argues Mr. Panos Zachariadis, Technical Director of Atlantic Bulk Carriers Management. With this respect, LNG should be viewed only as a SOx and NOx compliant fuel and those that invest in it ‘should proceed on these grounds’, he notes.
IMO already has the legal authority to implement and enforce policies to achieve its new climate target by simply amending its existing regulations, according to new analysis published by Environmental Defense Fund and Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
Creating LNG infrastructure for shipping in Europe would cost $22 billion and deliver a 6% reduction in ship GHG emissions by 2050 compared to the replaced diesel, a new study for Transport & Environment by the UMAS consultancy found. Until today, Europe has spent half a billion US dollars on LNG infrastructure.
By 2050, as many as one in every seven people in Bangladesh will have been forced to leave their homes because of climate change, says a new report by the Environmental Justice Foundation. The report highlights how urgent it is that the EU takes steps to mitigate against climate change.
In a bid to align with the ambitious targets on ship emissions reduction by 2050, Australian ports have started applying measures to encourage the industry to minimize GHG. In mid-May, NSW Ports announced introduction of an environmental incentive to apply to vessel related charges at Port Botany and Port Kembla.
Businesses’ failure to manage the earth’s natural resources or “natural capital” has consequences that extend beyond environmental effects. A new report by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty has categorized the transportation sector into the ‘danger zone’ in terms of natural capital risk exposure.
Tourism has been responsible for almost a tenth of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new research led by the University of Sydney. The paper also showed that small islands attract a disproportionate share of carbon emissions, while the US is responsible for the majority of tourism-generated emissions overall.
