Calls for shipping and aviation to do more to cut emissions

New York

EVEN though commercial aviation and ocean shipping are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions, they were excluded from the Paris climate treaty, to be signed by more than 100 countries this week at the United Nations in New York.

Now, governments and advocacy groups are pressuring these industries to take stronger steps to curb pollution.

A coalition of European, North African and South Pacific nations is lobbying the International Maritime Organization, the UN agency that oversees shipping, to start discussing an emissions-reduction commitment at a meeting in London that will begin on Monday.

"We need to do something and go beyond what we already have, and set some very specific targets," said François Martel, the secretary general of the Pacific Islands Development Forum. The forum's members include the Marshall Islands and the Solomon Islands, two of six nations that have made a proposal, expected to be ta…