Tag: sustainability

Norwegian capital city Oslo officially began its year as the 2019 European Green Capital on December 4. Oslo, during its tenure as 2019 European Green Capital, is expected to act as an ambassador for sustainable urban developments, aiming to inspire other cities and Member States through exemplary implementation of progressive environmental policies. 

An estimated total of 505 companies have set their Science Based Targets, under the global 'Science Based Targets initiative', launched in 2017 by the United Nations Global Compact, CDP, World Resources Institute (WRI), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and one of the We Mean Business Coalition commitments.

AECO, an industry association aiming to manage responsible expedition cruise tourism in the Arctic, signed the Buenos Aires Declaration on December 7. This Declaration states that signatories cannot knowingly enable the carriage or sale of illegally traded wildlife products.

Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) will use methanol as a marine fuel retrofitting its work boats with engines that could run with the green fuel. Cochin Shipyard would retrofit the boats at its facility in Kolkata. The shipyard had recently formed a joint venture with the city-based Hooghly Dock & Port Engineers.

The project "Towards A Sustainable Crewing System" is coming to its end. The TASCS project is EU-funded and developed by the European social partners of the inland waterways sector: European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF), the European Skippers’ Organisation (ESO) and the European Barge Union (EBU). 

According to UN's Environment report, almost 15% of the world’s terrestrial area is better safeguarded by conservation measures, as well as over 7% of the world’s oceans, ensuring the world is on track to meet important conservation aims, according to the latest Protected Planet Report.

According to a study conducted by Princeton and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, each year during the past quarter century, the world’s oceans have absorbed an amount of heat energy that is 150 times the energy humans produce as electricity annually. Researchers suggest that the strong ocean warning is caused because Earth is more sensitive to fossil-fuel emissions than previously thought.

COP 24 was held in Katowice, Poland, from 3 to 15 December, gathering parties from all around the world to push further work on the fight against climate change. Although the initial feeling was that the negotiations would not end up in some tangible results, governments eventually adopted a robust set of guidelines for implementing the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, literally on the edge of time.

The Ocean Health Index, a tool developed by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and Conservation International, evaluates the benefits people derive from the ocean. The 2018 assessment findings highlight that although the ocean health is stable, improvements are important in order to establish a sustainable future. 

The second phase of an IMO-implemented project to enhance safe and environmentally sound ship recycling in Bangladesh has been launched at a meeting of stakeholders in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 26 November. The 19-month project, funded under a US$1.1 million agreement with Norway, will focus on legal and institutional analysis of ship recycling in the country.