The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development expects trade to continue to grow in the coming decades. It may carry cargo for many hundreds of businesses destined for many ports run by different companies, be crewed by an outsourced staffing firm, and insured by another company. It can be built by one company, owned by a group of other companies, and operated by a group of yet more companies. They carry goods sourced in multiple places as they traverse the high seas, stopping in many countries.Ī single ship might be connected to dozens of companies. The ships themselves have international webs of owners, operators and registrations. Perhaps no industry is as globalized as maritime shipping. Figuring out whose emissions they are, however, is no easy task. Carbon dioxide emissions from international shipping could be added to this responsibility. In international climate change negotiations, countries are in charge of reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions.

We believe as scholars of global environmental cooperation that one way forward is to make international maritime shipping emissions the responsibility of specific countries with the goal of increasing pressure to encourage emission reductions. This is a real problem because if no country is held responsible for emissions, no government will try to reduce them. But hauling goods around by sea requires roughly 300 million tons of very dirty fuel, producing nearly 3 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, giving the international maritime shipping industry roughly the same carbon footprint as Germany.Īt summits like the COP24 meeting held in Poland in December of 2018 and in agreements such as the one struck in Paris in 2015, national governments have largely ignored the carbon dioxide emissions from international shipping entering the atmosphere.

Carbon emissions by transport type