Submissions fly in for next month’s MEPC

Submissions are flying in to the London headquarters of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) ahead of the eighty-first session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) next month where the focus will be on developing legally-binding measures to ensure last year’s milestone agreement to phase out greenhouse gases from shipping by 2050 is made possible.

The task at hand is to translate the net-zero by 2050 “ambition” of last year’s diplomatic agreement into concrete action with plenty of competing visions on how this can be achieved.

Now eight Pacific and Caribbean small island developing states (SIDS) have updated a proposal they’ve been touting for years, namely a universal mandatory levy on GHG emissions, with an entry price now of $150 per ton/CO2-equivalent, in combination with a global fuel standard. They also have set out a common position on revenue disbursement, arguing for the majority of funds to come to the priority needs of climate most vulnerable states.