By
Michele Witthaus |
The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (also known as COP21) was held at Le Bourget outside Paris from 29 November and concluded a day later than planned on Saturday 12 December with an agreement signed by 195 nations.
In an omission that took many observers by surprise, the agreement does not directly mention either shipping or aviation. Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for climate change research in Manchester, UK, strongly criticised the absence of aviation and shipping from the text of the agreement, saying that the proposed text was weaker than the ill-fated Copenhagen accord of 2009, which failed to garner binding agreement from the negotiating parties.
“Aspiration and rhetoric will not deliver reductions in CO2 emissions; we need to deliver action,” said Anderson. “The current text is not consistent with the latest science. The Copenhagen text included aviation and shipping emissions, that together are as large as the emissions of the UK and Germany combined, but they are not mentioned in the Paris text.” Regardless of the lack of explicit reference in the agreement, however, shipping is still covered by the existing Kyoto Protocol, which will remain in force until 2020.
IMO Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu said: “The Paris Agreement represents remarkable progress and builds on the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which itself was a significant step forward. The absence of any specific mention of shipping in the final text will in no way diminish the strong commitment of IMO as the regulator of the shipping industry to continue work to address GHG emissions from ships engaged in international trade.”
IMO welcomed the agreement’s goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.” It said that Member States recognised the need for international shipping, which accounts for 2.2% of CO2 anthropogenic emissions, to support global efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change.
To date, IMO is the only body to have adopted energy-efficiency measures that are legally binding across an entire global industry and apply to all countries.
International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) Secretary General, Peter Hinchliffe, said that in spite of the lack of direct reference to shipping in the text, “The Member States at IMO are the same nations that were present in Paris, but with officials that have a deep level of maritime expertise…I am sure IMO Member States will now proceed with new momentum to help the industry deliver ever greater CO2 reductions, as the world moves towards total decarbonisation by the end of the century.”
Discussions are expected to begin at IMO in April 2016 regarding the potential to formulate a CO2 reduction target for shipping. Talks are also likely to be held on the possibility of setting up a mandatory global CO2 data collection system for ships. In addition, IMO is considering additional actions such as developing a Market Based Measure to support emissions reductions.
To coincide with the Paris talks, IMO released a series of three short videos explaining its current role in reducing the effects of climate change through its regulatory measures, including this one which outlines how new ships will become increasingly efficient.
One of the big news stories that emerged during the conference was the emergence of the High Ambition Coalition, a group convened by the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum. The coalition was credited with breaking deadlocks during the talks by persuading the US and other major Parties to join its deliberations, which highlighted the importance of efforts to stay below the target of 1.5-degree warming above pre-industrial levels. The Marshall Islands, which is a major shipping registry, is now regarded as a frontline nation affected by climate change due to the threat it faces from rising sea levels.