IMO ready to step up to the plate In-depth | REGULATION


Te International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) director for the marine environment division, Miguel Palomares, says the institution is ready to regulate by enacting CO2 immediately.


is agreed at this meeting some old habits that people were used to may be forced to change in the face of man made and potentially catastrophic climate change. Te IMO, along with the rest of the global


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maritime industry, will want to know what the world’s leaders will expect of them. Te political masters in Copenhagen will decide what role the IMO has to play in delivering significant reductions in greenhouse gases (GHG) from the maritime industry.


CBDR Aſter Kyoto in 1997 shipping was charged with finding solutions to the levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions being emitted by the global fleet, but Mr Palomares says that it was that very treaty itself, with the stated aim of reducing GHG, which has been preventing the IMO, from moving on. “The principle of common but


differentiated responsibility (CBDR) conflicts with the IMO’s philosophy as enshrined in its constitutive to the IMO Convention, which recognises equal treatment for all ships engaged in international trade,” explains Mr Palomares. Effectively the CBDR allows developing


countries that generally speaking are not the world’s main polluters to have a lower responsibility than the developed, so-called Annex I countries of the industrialised world. He explains that the difficulty for the


maritime industry is that if this principle were to be literally applied to shipping and the developing nations were exempt from implementing the IMO regulations “Only 25% of the world’s merchant fleet, which is the proportion of ships now flagged in Annex I countries, would be obliged


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openhagen will host the climate change conference on the 7-18 December and depending on what


emission reduction measures that can be effective


of the CBDR with regards to the maritime industry or a more flexible interpretation of the principle that would enable IMO to regulate with the interests of developing countries firmly in mind. If and when the ruling has taken place


and the IMO is given the green light by the Copenhagen Conference a new debate will ensue within the maritime institution that will see CO2


reduction regulations added


Miguel Palomares, director, marine environment division.


to comply and this percentage would be drastically and rapidly reduced as many of these ships would change their flag to non-Annex I registries; in this situation, the contribution of international shipping to the wider efforts to arrest climate change would be negligible”, said Mr Palomares. A number of developing countries


with strong economies want to maintain their effective opt out by insisting on the application of the CBDR principle, which means that ships registered by these countries would not be forced by treaty to meet the same stringent controls as those flagged in the world’s industrialised states. Although Mr Palomares would not


be drawn on which countries they were it is generally accepted that there are five emerging economies to which the principle of CBDR applies and they include India and China. If politicians decide in Copenhagen


to uphold the IMO’s guiding principle of “equal or non-discriminatory regulation of all ships in international trade, irrespective of flag or ownership”, over the Kyoto’s principle of CBDR then the organisation will be able to move ahead with a raſt of new regulations that would considerably reduce GHG emissions from shipping. One way that this might happen is a suspension


to an existing IMO instrument, possibly MARPOL Annex VI, which contains regulations for the prevention of pollution from ships, although CO2


is not currently


considered a pollutant in the strict sense of the word.


Work plan Following a decision of the 23 IMO Assembly, in 2005 the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) adopted a work plan and an associated timetable setting out the development of technical, operational and market based measures that would see the industry significantly reduce its emissions as a result. Tat plan is currently blocked by the


emerging economies because they say these measures should only be taken by the Annex I countries and so the IMO arrived at an impasse the solution to which, can only be found by their political masters. In pursuing the work plan, the MEPC


has developed technical measures in the shape of an Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), which will apply to new ships. Te index, together with guidelines for its application and verification has been circulated for voluntary application and is expected to be refined by MEPC 60 in March 2010 for enactment. Te EEDI is comprised of a complex


formula that “will challenge designers and builders to develop ships that are intrinsically energy efficient and should engage the naval architecture profession


The Naval Architect November 2009


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