IMO's stance on greenhouse gases angers environmental lobby

SEVERAL environmental organisations fumed in a joint statement following a key meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) last week that "governments have backtracked on their own commitments to urgently reduce climate-heating emissions from the shipping sector".

The IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) had just approved a draft of new mandatory regulations to cut the carbon intensity of existing ships.

The environmental lobby was not impressed. It described the proposal as allowing "the shipping sector's one billion tonnes of annual greenhouse gas emissions to keep rising for the rest of this decade - the very decade in which the world's climate scientists say we must halve global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to stay within a relatively safe 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, as committed to under the Paris Climate Agreement".