The heads of 7 of the 8 political groups of the European Parliament’s environment committee wrote yesterday to the Environment Ministers of the 28 EU countries urging them to include international shipping and aviation in a global climate deal at Paris.
“To promote increased climate ambition from ICAO and IMO, like all the other sectors of the global economy, aviation and international shipping require an emissions reduction target. There is no reasonable excuse to continue exempting these two economy sectors from the global policy framework. Aviation and shipping need to contribute in the same way that is required of all UNFCCC Parties, large and small ,” the MEP letter reads.
The Environment Ministers of the 28 European member states will be meeting on 18 September to finalise the EU position for COP21.
Sotiris Raptis, clean shipping officer at sustainable transport group Transport & Environment, commented: “It’s simply fair to demand from two economic sectors with emissions the size of Germany and South Korea to reduce CO2 emissions in line with keeping the global temperature increase below 2 degrees celsius. The IMO and ICAO have been procrastinating so far. The time for action has come.”
The European Parliament called last week for the establishment of an EU 2030 emissions reduction target for shipping and measures for the reduction of ships’ speed (slow steaming).
International aviation and shipping already account for up to 8% of the global climate change problem and their emissions are expected to grow by 2050 by 200-300% for aviation and 50-250% for shipping. It is believed that such increases would undermine efforts to limit the rise of global temperature to under 2 degrees.