Three climate vulnerable Pacific nations have asked the world’s governments to agree to aim to make international shipping emissions-free by 2050.
In a proposal to the UN’s shipping body, the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Kiribati cited a major report published earlier this month summarising the latest climate science.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said to limit global heating to 1.5C, the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, global carbon dioxide emissions must fall rapidly and reach net zero by 2050. On current trends, the temperature threshold is due to be breached by 2040.
In a letter to his fellow delegates, the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Albon Ishoda wrote: “The findings of the recent [IPCC] report could not be clearer and fill us, the most vulnerable to this climate emergency, with alarm.”
He added: “Humanity is at a tipping point. Without immediate and decisive action to now peak and rapidly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of all sectors, states and cultures such as ours will be consigned to history.”
