How the International Maritime Organization Can Succeed Where Three Decades of COP Meetings Failed
Christiaan De Beukelaer argues that meeting the 2023 IMO Strategy in full is necessary and feasible. But it requires unequivocally ambitious measures in 2025.
In July 2023, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted an ambitious Strategy to phase out greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by 2050. This now needs translating into legally binding measures.
Climate science warns of 3.1˚C of warming within one lifetime, while 2024 is the hottest year on record, breaching the 1.5˚C limit. Catastrophic tipping points become riskier with every tenth of a degree. Current IMO targets do not convince convincingly maintain human habitability. Its Strategy is “ambitious”, but only barely so. Its “striving” targets – to cut emissions by 30% by 2030 and 80% by 2040 (versus 2008) – are the absolute minimum needed to have any chance of keeping warming below 1.5˚C.
Multilateral negotiations never came this close to setting legally binding objectives at a global scale. With everything in place to revolutionize climate governance, the IMO offers hope considering three decades of failed climate summits: Emissions are higher than ever, while rich countries fail t to deliver adequate climate action and finance.
If IMO negotiations fail to deliver, it would illustrate politicians and diplomats’ refusal to deliver on their promises and commitments. That’s why the next months are crucial.
Is Shipping Different?
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2015 Paris Agreement mandated the IMO to regulate shipping emissions, as political sensitivities excluded international emissions from national commitments. Two decades after Kyoto, IMO member states set a weak target in 2018, superseded in 2023 by a full phase out by mid-century.
Shipping is unique in its regulatory architecture: the IMO is both a multilateral UN agency and the competent authority to set binding rules.
The Marshall Islands spearheaded these targets with fellow high-ambition states. This alliance of mostly SIDS and LDCs received partial support from the European Union, the UK, and some other rich countries. The resulting hard-fought compromise should not be up for renegotiation.
At the latest IMO climate negotiations, 39 out of 176 Member States explicitly support a Universal Levy, up from 34 in early 2024. This includes climate vulnerable SIDS and LDCs, the EU and the UK, with more African states now supporting a Levy. Despite explicit support from the Climate Vulnerable Forum, including through the Dhaka-Glasgow Declaration, numerous IMO member states remain silent on the issue.
However, Petro/BRICS seek to dilute the Strategy, fearing that stringent measures would harm trade, while universal emissions pricing would discharge rich countries’ historical climate responsibilities. IMO-commissioned research by UNCTAD (see below) dispels the former fear, while the latter issue would only arise if a shipping levy would replace, rather than complement, existing climate finance – which no levy proponents suggest.
Petro-states fear that strict measures would eliminate fossil fuels as propulsive energy, which is the point of the Strategy.
We cannot allow IMO member states to squander this opportunity.
Not That Hard to Abate
The myth that shipping is “hard to abate”, created a false choice between curbing emissions and protection global trade. It long favoured inertia over action. Today, a rapid maritime energy shift is technologically and economically feasible, though the struggle is not yet won.
What’s needed is the political will to translate the agreed-upon Strategy into watertight measures designed to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. This is precisely why some countries are walking back on IMO member states’ unanimous commitment made in July 2023.
The developing-developed country split that underpins the CBDR-RC principle is flawed, but countries do deserve differentiated treatment. Climate vulnerability and historical responsibility are non-negotiable. Though because ships can change flag overnight, ex-ante differentiation through exemptions carries unacceptable risk. It is more practicable to use ex-post corrections and compensation.
The architecture to create an ambitious and binding set of measures exists. It relies on making amendments to the existing annex to the Marine Pollution Convention (MARPOL, 1972), designed to prevent air pollution by seagoing ships (Annex VI, 2005).
Competing Proposals or Divergent Objectives?
The Strategy requires the development of both technical and economic measures. Four proposals tabled in 2024 carry over to the next Intersessional Working Group meeting in February 2025, before the decisive Committee meeting (MEPC83, April 2025). Disagreement on scope, level, and interplay of these measures persists.
Petro/BRICS call for a “fuel standard” (GFS) with a built-in economic measure that only prices emissions non-compliant with the GFS (Angola et al. ISWG-GHG 17/2/7).
The other three proposals all include a universal price on all GHG emissions, though they differ substantively. The industry favours a GFS with limited flexibility and a low GHG price (Bahamas et al. ISWG-GHG 17/2/5). The EU propose a relatively high GHG price (starting at US$100/t of CO2e) with flexible GFS (Austria et al. ISWG-GHG 17/2/2). SIDS propose a strict GFS and a levy starting at US$150/t of CO2e with a limited feebate for eligible energy sources (Belize et al. ISWG-GHG 17/2/14).
The Strategy sets out a triple purpose in Article 4.5. First, phase out GHG emissions within the Strategy’s timeline. Second, effectively incentivise the industry; by pricing GHG emissions and rewarding first movers. Third, do this through a just and equitable transition.
Are they all bona fide in their commitment to the Strategy? An independent assessment of proposals suggests not. Petro/BRICS propose measures that are designed not to meet the targets that IMO Member States unanimously agreed on. The EU and Industry-led proposals have good elements, though are weakened by their design. The SIDS proposal passes muster with flying colours.
What is Proportionate?
International shipping represents 3% of global GHG emissions. The polluter (shipping industry) should phase out this pollution while making proportionate contributions to developing countries' US$2.4 trillion annual global climate finance needs. This amounts, pro rata, to some US$72b a year for shipping.
Pricing shipping emissions at US$100-150/ton of CO2e would generate some US$60 (World Bank) to US$127b (UNCTAD) over the next decades.
This would enable the largely untaxed global industry to pay for its own transition through intra-industry subsidies of genuine climate solutions. It would leave enough to support a just and equitable transition, through targeted climate finance in addition to existing UNFCCC commitments.
Judicious and effective spending requires both in-sector and out-of-sector disbursement of revenues. In-sector means relative to emissions of IMO-regulated activities – that is, maritime transport between states. Therefore, out-of-sector means everything beyond this scope. While some countries, notably EU members, are open to widening the definition of “in-sector”, I argue that a narrow definition should be upheld, while out-of-sector revenue spending on mitigation, adaptation, and reparation are justified, for at least three reasons.
First, the shipping industry caused mitigation, adaptation, and reparation needs to ports, coastal areas and communities, future generations, and the environment. While shipping-related, these are out-of-sector.
Second, landlocked countries, for lack of maritime ports require capital investment in non-maritime transport, such as inland rail and waterways to compensate for rising maritime transport costs.
Third, domestic shipping (which falls under NDCs) in developing countries (notably SIDS and LDCs), require support to phase out fossil fuels in lockstep with international shipping.
No one expects the IMO to solve “all of the world’s problems” or to be the “cash cow for climate change”, which some negotiators of rich countries and industry lobbyists suggest. By phasing out its own emissions and making a proportionate contribution to climate finance, the industry would do no more than its fair share.
Four Crucial Months
There are two major challenges when observing IMO negotiations.
First, not all proposed measures convincingly set out to meet the Strategy’s goal in full. Some do not, as they effectively aim to renegotiate the Strategy. If the IMO wants to adopt evidence-based measures, they should therefore not be considered further in negotiations.
Second, future COP hosts are derailing IMO negotiations. Brazil, hosting COP30 in 2025, actively works to undermine a universal price on shipping emissions at IMO risking weak measures that do not deliver on the Strategy. Türkiye, COP31 hopeful, sides with Brazil, despite adopting its own emissions trading scheme, resembling the EU ETS. Australia, another COP31 hopeful, plans a “Pacific” COP, but consistently fails to support Pacific States calling for a universal shipping levy. Their positions jeopardise both climate talks at the IMO and future UNFCCC climate summits through further mitigation denial.
Even so, by adopting the first ever legally binding global carbon price, the IMO could demonstrate the United Nations’ ability to deliver adequate climate action and climate finance. This would be a major win for multilateralism and climate action, when both are in peril.
Failure is Not an Option
Meeting the 2023 IMO Strategy in full is necessary and feasible. The groundwork to deliver an ambitious and equitable climate action at the IMO is done. The SIDS proposal offers a feasible pathway to deliver on its GHG Strategy.
What stands in the way is Petro/BRICS’ political sabotage driven by the short-term national interests. This imperils humanity.
Meanwhile, climate vulnerable states push for effective climate action at the IMO, to ensure long-term survival. This serves humanity.
Absent unequivocally ambitious measures in 2025, shipping executives will further delay investments in expensive long-term alternatives to fossil fuels. If opting for cheaper but utterly flawed “transition” fuels like fossil gas (LNG) they risk locking in high GHG emissions for the 25-year lifespan for each such vessel.
After April 2025, the next opportunity to tighten targets would be in 2030. The carbon budget to keep warming below 1.5˚C will be long spent and the IMO’s window of opportunity to drive real change will be firmly shut behind us.
Christiaan De Beukelaer is a Senior Lecturer in Culture & Climate at the University of Melbourne and a Global Horizons Senior Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. His most recent book Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping, is also available in French translation as Cargo à Voile: Une Aventure Militante pour un Transport Maritime Durable.
Photo by Wolfgang Weiser
