Last week saw Seas At Risk member Stichting De Noordzee (SDN) help launch the European expansion of the Clean Shipping Index, welcoming the first Dutch company to join the environmental performance monitoring tool.
The first global agreement to cut carbon emissions from ships has been blocked by several developing countries. The International Maritime Organisation had been set to approve an Energy Efficient Design Index for ships at its meeting last week in London, following four years of work.
The recently formed Clean Shipping Coalition, of which Seas At Risk is a founding member, has gained consultative status at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).
EU greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector for 2008 fell for the first time in almost twenty years, a report by the European Environment Agengy (EEA) has found.
This month saw the launch of a brand new international environmental coalition dedicated exclusively to the greening of international shipping.
A new Seas At Risk report assessing the potential of the shipping industry to cut its GHG emissions has concluded that if the main fleet sectors make full use of existing fleet overcapacity they could reduce emissions by as much as a third.
“Market failures” have been blamed for putting off a more carbon efficient shipping sector as experts suggest an emissions trading scheme is ripe for shipping, a European Commission funded report has said.
A deal on including aviation and shipping emissions in the Copenhagen climate agreement is being blocked by China, India, Saudi Arabia and The Bahamas, putting the 2 degrees Celsius target and $30bn of adaptation funding at risk.
Environmental NGOs working on GHG emissions from marine and aviation bunkers have published a joint position ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit.
A European Parliament resolution on the EU strategy for the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change has upped the stakes on targets for marine bunker emissions.
The Council of Ministers has rejected a Commission proposal to count ship emissions towards national totals under a new global climate treaty if the IMO fails to agree reductions.
Ministers did however recognise that shipping emissions are growing fast and stressed that emission reduction targets for the sector “should be incorporated into the Copenhagen agreement and that Parties should commit to work through… the IMO to enable an international agreement that does not lead to competitive distortions or carbon leakage, that is agreed in 2010 and approved by 2011.”
The International Maritime Organisation's Antifouling System Convention entered into force today, some seven years after its adoption.
The Convention, which bans the use of Tributyltin (TBT) based antifouling paints globally, and contains a regime for restricting the use of other harmful antifouling paint technologies, met the requirement of ratification by 25 States representing 25% of the world's shipping tonnage last year. The Convention was adopted in London in October 2001 but the ratification process has been slow with the first of the large flag States (Panama) only ratifying in 2007. The Convention has now been ratified by 34 States representing 53% of the world's merchant shipping tonnage.
China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and India have continued to obstruct and undermine every substantial proposal for tackling GHG emissions from shipping at an IMO meeting in Oslo his week.
The International Maritime Organisation’s special greenhouse gas working group meeting, which concluded today, was tasked with carrying forward a number of key initiatives aimed at reducing GHG emissions from shipping. Despite constructive proposals from the European Commission and EU states, progress on an emissions trading scheme and a levy on marine bunker fuel were blocked entirely, while China and others took every opportunity to weaken and delay plans for design and operational indexes that would reduce CO2 emissions from new and existing ships respectively.
The process to reduce GHG emissions from ships is being threatened by developing countries who fail to recognise that the shipping industry is a special case and requires a special global sectoral approach.
London, 7th April 2008. Last week the International Maritime Organisation successfully negotiated an end to the use by ships of polluting residual heavy fuel oil but made little progress on greenhouse gas emissions.
London, 31st March 2008. The 57th session of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee starts today in London, and GHG emissions from shipping is a key item on the agenda.
Since the adoption of the Commission’s first communication on maritime safety - "A Common Policy on Safe Seas" - which in 1993 aimed at ensuring that all ships flying under the flag of an EU Member State or entering an EU port comply with international safety standards, the European Community has constantly developed and intensified its maritime safety policy.
London, 12th July. Panama today announced that it had completed the process of national ratification of the AFS Convention, ensuring that the Convention will enter into force during 2008.
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