What role for IMO and ICAO

Acting on these emissions through NDCs may raise the question of how action taken at the international level, through ICAO and IMO, can be accounted for. As for many sectors of the economy, international cooperation plays an essential role in facilitating climate ambition. However, there should be no suggestion that joining international efforts means that a party is excluding these emissions, in this case international aviation and shipping, from their commitments, and therefore is not under an obligation to take early or additional and complementary national action.

Parties working though ICAO and IMO are at different stages in adopting targets and measures to help address these sectors’ climate impact. ICAO has established a target offsetting CO, emissions above 2020 levels and, at its 2016 triennial assembly, requested its Council to begin work on establishing a longterm emission reduction strategy beyond 2020. In April 2018 the IMO agreed on a long-term goal of at least a 50% reduction by 2050 from 2008 levels as a start towards decarbonisation, but it is only the beginning work as discussions on actual reduction measures have yet to start in order to achieve this target.The adoption and implementation of these measures may take many more years.

Parties working through ICAO and IMO aim for the broadest possible participation in their collective action. Experience over the past 20 years shows the level of ambition for collective action at the ICAO and IMO levels will continue to remain below what is required under the Paris Agreement. While states must continue to work to boost ambition in these agencies by agreeing to more effective measures and more urgently, and in particular align the positions they adopt in ICAO/IMO with the positions adopted in UNFCCC, ultimately states will likely need to pursue additional ambition on a national, regional or bilateral basis. This ambition may be complementary or subsumed partly or wholly in whatever measures and targets are adopted by ICAO/IMO. In some areas, such as fuel taxation, ICAO has no competence and so is not in a position to adopt the measure that is widely used in other transport modes. Any move at the IMO on marine fuel taxation/levy would require all major flag and port states to agree and strictly enforce a global lev)'. Such a levy could be implemented only through the adoption and ratification of a new international treaty, which would take 10—15 years to put in place. Some measures, such as taxation of shore-side electricity and environmentally friendly port charges as well as investment in the development and deployment of zero emission fuels/ propulsion technologies, is even outside the remits of the IMO.

Level of ambition resulting from inclusion in NDCs

Inclusion of these sectors within NDCs does not prejudge or imply a level of ambition in terms of emission reductions. The Paris Agreement provides parties with the right to determine the level of ambition of their NDCs overall, and the level of ambition applied to each sector within the NDCs. The only requirement is that they do not reduce a level of ambition once adopted — the “no backsliding’’provision of Article 3.

Inclusion does not prescribe a level of ambition. However, its purpose is to ensure that parties examine all sectors of their economy and, on the basis of evaluating the cost and efficiencies of reducing emissions from specific sectors, makes a determination as to the level of ambition required economy-wide and for different sectors. There is also the issue of linkages between different sectors — for example, efforts to electrify or use alternative fuels to reduce emissions from shipping and aviation will have implications for efforts to reduce emissions from other sectors by, for example, diverting renewable electricity or increasing demand for crop-based biofuels. Adopting economy-wide NDCs covering all sectors therefore allows for a more thorough analysis of the impact of reducing emissions from each sector.

Conclusion and recommendations

Excluding international aviation and shipping from national and regional efforts, sectors which if they were states would both be top ten emitters, risks fatally undermining the objective of the Paris Agreement. It is therefore appropriate that they are included by parties in their NDCs.This would reduce incidents of states not aligning their UNFCCC positions with their ICAO/IMO positions, and inclusion would therefore boost ambition in these agencies. The absence of a commonly agreed method for allocating emissions is not a barrier to states taking action, including committing to do so in their NDCs. States should adopt national measures and targets, additional to measures and targets agreed at ICAO/IMO, to address emissions from these sectors.

Note

1 For the remaining three options, that meeting added that they were “considered to be less practical because of data requirements or inadequate global coverage”.

References

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Sausen, R. (2009). Aviation and global climate change in the 21st century. Atmospheric Environment, 43(22-23), pp. 3520-3537. doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2009.04.024.

UNFCCC. (1997). COP 3, decision 2.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (1996). Communication from parties included in annex I to the convention: Guidelines, schedule and process for consideration: Addendum: Detailed information on electricity trade and international bunker fuels.