What is an appropriate measurement and apportionment strategy for international shipping?

1 January 2012

Much of international shipping’s activity takes place outside national borders or a nation’s EEZ – in “international waters”. Consequently, conventional geographic definitions of nationality cannot fully encompass the sector’s emissions. This led, in the Kyoto Protocol, to the IMO being given responsibility for developing international policy to control shipping’s GHG emissions. Among other reasons, slow progress in that arena and a desire by countries and companies to develop metrics in order to evaluate their individual share of shipping’s carbon emissions, has led to an aspiration to be able to apportion emissions at sub-international levels. To be an appropriate strategy, it is suggested that a measurement and apportionment strategy must be fair and feasible to implement. Therefore, this paper will first explore alternative approaches to apportionment and quantify the implications of these philosophies to different regions/countries. The approaches will then be discussed from the perspective of implementation, particularly with regards to monitoring, reporting and verification, and finally with respect to how the approaches can be incorporated in models/forecasts to explore future emissions scenarios.