6 July 2017, Climate Home, The tax-free shipping company that took control of a country’s UN mission. How the tiny, climate-threatened Marshall Islands came to be represented at UN shipping talks by a private company based in Virginia, 11,000 km away. In 2015 Tony de Brum, then foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, came to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in London to deliver a simple message: international shipping must decarbonise or be responsible for destroying his country. International shipping could be responsible for nearly a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions by 2050. If the IMO, the branch of the UN that regulates international shipping, failed to set ambitious climate targets, it would be disastrous for low-lying islands like his own, de Brum would say. But when he walked in to the IMO plenary, de Brum found strangers sitting in his country’s place. “I was talking about a Goldilocks situation,” he told Climate Home two years later on the verandah of his bungalow on the Marshallese capital atoll Majuro, a few feet from the lagoon. “We had some difficulty convincing the people who were sitting in our seats, literally, that we were the representatives of the Marshall Islands.” The people de Brum found representing the Marshall Islands were from International Registries Inc. (IRI), a private shipping register headquartered in Reston, Virginia. According to its website, the company provides access to the Marshall Islands flag and a “zero tax jurisdiction that statutorily exempts non-resident domestic corporations from taxation on their income and assets”. Thanks to IRI, the Marshall Islands boasts the second largest fleet of ships in the world and the world’s largest fleet of oil tankers. The company attracts ship owners with the promise of zero corporation tax and no seafarer nationality requirements – the latter allows them to skirt organised labour. The 45,000 offshore companies registered with IRI also benefit from corporate anonymity. De Brum, now climate change ambassador for the Marshall Islands, said he was “appalled” by IRI’s suspicious response to his arrival at the IMO. He did eventually deliver his message. But two years on, the shipping industry remains out of step with the rest of the world on climate change. In 20 years, the IMO has made just one intervention to address carbon emissions: an efficiency index which the International Energy Agency said would only improve efficiency by 1% between 2015 and 2025. A new study by CE Delft found the efficiency of new ships actually got worse in 2016. Read More here
Tag Archives: UNFCCC
8 June 2017, The Conversation, What is a pre-industrial climate and why does it matter? Over the past few days there has been a lot of talk about the Paris climate agreement, from which the United States is planning to withdraw. Although this is a setback, there is still near-complete consensus from the world’s governments that a strong effort to tackle climate change is needed. The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming relative to a pre-industrial baseline. Its precise commitment is: Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. But this begs the question: what are “pre-industrial levels”? Clearly, if we’re aiming to limit global warming to 1.5℃ or 2℃ above a certain point, we need a common understanding of what we’re working from. But the Paris Agreement doesn’t provide a definition. This becomes key as governments expect climate scientists to coherently compare different plans to reach their Paris targets. It’s crucial to be clear on what researchers mean when we say “pre-industrial”, and what assumptions our projections are based on. Of course, as the chart below shows, no matter which baseline we use it’s clear there’s been a drastic rise in global temperature over the last century. Read More here
28 May 2017, The Guardian, Australia will still support Paris climate deal if Trump pulls out, Frydenberg says. The Turnbull government will support the Paris agreement on climate change regardless of whether or not the US president, Donald Trump, pulls out, the environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, has signalled. Trump upset world leaders on the weekend by refusing, at the conclusion of the G7 summit in Italy, to declare his support for the UN’s landmark treaty signed in Paris in 2015. Despite two days of urging from leaders from Europe, Canada and Japan to pledge his support for the agreement, Trump tweeted on Saturday: “I will make my final decision on the Paris accord next week!” His position left his counterparts frustrated, with some warning if the US pulled out of the Paris agreement other countries may want to reduce their commitments too. But when asked about Australia’s commitment in the wake of Trump’s tweet, Frydenberg told Guardian Australia the Turnbull government takes its emissions targets seriously “and we’re going on and trying to meet them”. “Issues about domestic climate change policy in the United States is a matter for the Trump administration,” Frydenberg said. He also pointed to a quote from Malcolm Turnbull from November last year, when Turnbull was asked if Australia would remain in the Paris agreement if then president-elect Trump followed through on his threat to cancel the emissions reductions commitments made by Barack Obama in December 2015. Turnbull had said: “When Australia makes a commitment to a global agreement, we follow through and that is exactly what we are doing.” Turnbull also described the Paris agreement as “a watershed and a turning point” that would deliver international action on climate change. “My government is committed to [the Paris agreement]. We have ratified it,” he had said. Read More here
24 May 2017, DeSmogUK, Op-Ed: Glacial Progress at Bonn Climate Talks Shows Why we Need to Exclude Big Polluters From Negotiations. When it comes to the fossil fuel industry participating in UN climate negotiations, it’s clear there is a conflict of interest – and demands for this to end are nothing new. But after fierce resistance to this idea during talks in Bonn last week from the EU, US and Australia, more needs to be done, argues Pascoe Sabido of Corporate Europe Observatory. With just six months to go before November’s COP23 climate negotiations, calls for big polluters to be excluded from the talks are growing. Last May at the same ‘intersessional’ climate talks in Bonn, a group of countries representing more than 70 percent of the world’s population insisted on adding a conflict of interest provision in the negotiating text. It almost made it, were it not for an underhand move by the European Union and the USA which saw it removed. Pulling the strings behind such moves: the world’s largest fossil fuel companies. Taken to its logical conclusion, addressing conflicts of interest would mean kicking out the same corporations whose profits are built on causing climate change. Research shows that at least 80 per cent of known fossil fuel reserves need to be kept in the ground to keep global warming below 2 degrees, let alone 1.5 degrees. But a look at BP and Shell’s future energy projections allege that we can continue to burn fossil fuels indefinitely. Ending fossil fuels would put them out of business. This is a fundamental conflict of interest, yet getting it even discussed – let alone addressed – has been an uphill struggle. However, persistence of those countries at the frontline of climate change – particularly Ecuador, which is seeing increasing water shortages and crop failures – as well as increasing public outrage and civil society’s call on the UN to ‘Kick Big Polluters Out’ of climate policy, has ensured the issue has remained on the agenda. This year’s two-week intersessional talks in Bonn saw an official workshop on the topic organised by the secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Read More here