New York Times
- Matt Apuzzo
| Sarah Hurtes
Behind closed doors, shipbuilders and miners can speak on behalf of
governments while regulating an industry that pollutes as much as all of
America’s coal plants.
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The International Maritime Organization’s headquarters in London.
Shipbuilders, oil companies, miners and chemical manufacturers are
among the delegates appointed by many member nations.
Credit...Mary Turner for The New York Times
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LONDON — During a contentious meeting over proposed climate regulations last
fall, a Saudi diplomat to the obscure but powerful International Maritime
Organization switched on his microphone to make an angry complaint: One of his
colleagues was revealing the proceedings on Twitter as they happened.
It was a breach of the secrecy at the heart of the I.M.O., a clubby United
Nations agency on the banks of the Thames that regulates international shipping
and is charged with reducing emissions in an industry that burns an oil so thick
it might otherwise be turned into asphalt. Shipping produces as much carbon
dioxide as all of America’s coal plants combined.
Internal documents, recordings and dozens of interviews reveal what has gone on
for years behind closed doors: The organization has repeatedly delayed and
watered down climate regulations, even as emissions from commercial shipping
continue to rise, a trend that threatens to undermine the goals of the 2016
Paris climate accord.
One reason for the lack of progress is that the I.M.O. is a regulatory body that
is run in concert with the industry it regulates. Shipbuilders, oil companies,
miners, chemical manufacturers and others with huge financial stakes in
commercial shipping are among the delegates appointed by many member nations.
They sometimes even speak on behalf of governments, knowing that public records
are sparse, and that even when the organization allows journalists into its
meetings, it typically prohibits them from quoting people by name.
An agency lawyer underscored that point last fall in addressing the Saudi
complaint. “This is a private meeting,” warned the lawyer, Frederick J. Kenney.
Next week, the organization is scheduled to enact its first greenhouse gas rules
since Paris — regulations that do not cut emissions, have no enforcement
mechanism and leave key details shrouded in secrecy. No additional proposals are
far along in the rule-making process, meaning additional regulations are likely
five years or more away.
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A container ship sailing out of Hong Kong last year. The industry
burns an oil so thick it might otherwise be turned into asphalt.
Credit...Jerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock
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The reason, records show, is that some of the same countries that signed the
Paris accords have repeatedly diluted efforts to rein in shipping emissions —
with industry representatives in their ears at every step. Shippers aligned
themselves with developing nations like Brazil and India against setting
emissions caps. China, home to four of the five busiest ports in the world,
argued for years that it was too soon to make changes or even set targets.
Often, what politicians say publicly does not match their closed-door posture.
In 2019, for example, when the Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, urged world
leaders to make “more ambitious climate commitments,” his diplomats in London
worked to defeat shipping speed limits, a measure that would have reduced carbon
emissions.
The stakes are high. Shipping, unlike other industries, is not easily
regulated nation-by-nation. A Japanese-built tanker, for instance, might be
owned by a Greek company and sailed by an Indian crew from China to Australia
— all under the flag of Panama. That’s why, when world leaders omitted
international shipping from the Paris agreement, responsibility fell to the
I.M.O., which has standardized the rules since 1948.
So if the I.M.O. does not curb shipping emissions, it is unclear who
will. And for now, the agency is not rushing to change.
“They have gone out of their way to try to block or water down or
discourage real conversation,” said Albon Ishoda, a Marshall Islands diplomat.
His tiny Pacific island nation is among those that have benefited from, and
perpetuated, the industry’s hold on the agency. The country effectively sold its
diplomatic seat in London to a private American company decades ago.
But global warming changed things. Seas are rising.
Homes are washing away. Much of the nation could become unlivable in the coming decade.
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Children playing near the ocean in the Marshall Islands in 2015.
Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times
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Now, the Marshall Islands are putting forward a moonshot environmental plan, a
carbon tax that would penalize polluters. It is a shot across the bow of the
I.M.O.’s industrial and political forces.
And the Marshallese are moving to reclaim their diplomatic seat and speak for
themselves.
“My voice is coming from my ancestors, who saw the ocean as something that
brought us wealth,” Kitlang Kabua, the Marshallese minister leading the effort.
“Today we’re seeing it as something that will bring our ultimate death.”
Watered Down from the Get-Go
The Marshallese are unlikely disrupters at the maritime organization.
In 1990, the nation’s first president signed a deal with a company,
International Registries Inc., to create a tax-friendly, low-cost way for ships
to sail under the Marshall Islands flag.
The company, based in Virginia, did all the work and, on paper, the Marshall
Islands became home to one of the world’s largest fleets. The government shared
in the revenue — roughly $8 million a year as of recently, one official said.
Things got thorny, however, when the foreign minister, Tony de Brum, traveled to
the I.M.O. in 2015. His stories of his vanishing homeland had given urgency to
the Paris talks and he expected a similar reception in London.
He and his team had no idea what they were walking into.
When Mr. Ishoda arrived in island business attire — floral shirt, trousers and a
suit jacket — he said security sent him back to his hotel for a tie.
“The I.M.O. is effectively a closed-door gathering of old male sailors,” said
Thom Woodroofe, an analyst who accompanied Mr. de Brum to London. “It’s
surprising it doesn’t still allow smoking.”
Mr. de Brum, too,
was almost denied a seat. International Registries, which represented the Marshall Islands on the
I.M.O., initially refused to yield to the foreign minister, Mr. Woodroofe
recalled.
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Foreign Minister Tony de Brum in the Marshall Islands in 2015.
Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times
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At
United Nations climate meetings, countries are typically represented by senior politicians and delegations of
government officials. At the maritime organization’s environmental committee,
however, one in four delegates comes from industry, according to separate
analyses by The New York Times and the nonprofit group
Influence Map.
Representatives of the Brazilian mining company Vale,
one of the industry’s heaviest carbon polluters
and a major sea-based exporter, sit as government advisers. So does the French
oil giant Total, along with many shipowner associations. These arrangements
allow companies to influence policy and speak on behalf of governments.
Connections can be hard to spot. Luiz Gylvan Meira Filho sat on the Brazilian
delegation in 2017 and 2018 as a University of Sao Paulo scientist. But he also
worked
at a Vale-funded research organization
and, during his second year, was a paid Vale consultant. In an interview, he
described his role as mutually beneficial: Brazilian officials relied on his
expertise, and Vale covered his costs.
“Sometimes you cannot tell the difference. Is this actually the position of a
nation or the position of the industry?” said David Paul, a Marshallese senator
who attended an I.M.O. meeting in 2018.
Hundreds of other industry representatives are accredited observers and can
speak at meetings.
Their numbers far exceed
those of the approved environmental groups. The agency rejected an accreditation
request by the Environmental Defense Fund in 2018.
Industry officials and the maritime organization say such arrangements give a
voice to the experts. “If you don’t involve the people who are actually going to
have to deliver, then you’re going to get a poor outcome,” said Guy Platten,
secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping.
Mr. de Brum tried to persuade these industry officials and diplomats to set
ambitious emissions targets over the following eight months.
“Time is short, and it is not our friend,” he told delegates in 2015, according
to notes from the meeting. (The Times independently obtained meeting records and
never agreed not to quote people.)
But I.M.O.’s secretary general at the time, Koji Sekimizu of Japan,
openly opposed
strict emissions regulation as a hindrance to economic growth. And an informal
bloc of countries and industry groups helped drag out the goal-setting process
for three years.
Documents show that China, Brazil and India, in particular, threw up repeated
roadblocks: In 2015, it was too soon to consider a strategy. In 2016, it was
premature to discuss setting targets. In 2017, they lacked the data to discuss
long-term goals.
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Container ships and other vessels off the coast of Singapore.
Credit...Vivek Prakash/Reuters
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The question of data comes up often. Adm. Luiz Henrique Caroli, Brazil’s senior
I.M.O. representative, said he does not believe the studies showing rising
emissions. Brazil wants to cut emissions, he said, but not before further study
on the economic effect.
“We want to do that, this reduction, in a controlled way,” he said in an
interview.
The Cook Islands, another Pacific archipelago, make a similar argument. Like the
Marshalls, they face rising seas and an uncertain future. But the more immediate
concerns are jobs and cost of living, said Joshua Mitchell, of the country’s
foreign office. “Existential questions have to be balanced against the
priorities of the country in the moment,” he said.
Megan Darby, a journalist for Climate Home News, said she was suspended from
maritime meetings after quoting
a Cook Islands diplomat.
The I.M.O. almost never puts environmental policies to a vote, favoring instead
an informal consensus-building. That effectively gives vocal opponents blocking
power, and even some of the agency’s defenders acknowledge that it favors
minimally acceptable steps over decisive action.
So, when delegates finally set goals in 2018, Mr. de Brum’s ambition had been
whittled away.
The Marshall Islands suggested a target of zero emissions “by the second half of
the century” — meaning by 2050. Industry representatives offered a slightly
different goal: Decarbonization should occur “within” the second half of the
century, a one-word difference that amounted to a 50-year extension.
Soon, though, the delegates agreed, without a vote, to eliminate zero-emissions
targets entirely.
What remained were two key goals:
First, the industry would try to improve fuel efficiency by at least 40 percent.
This was largely a mirage. The target was set so low that, by some calculations,
it was reached nearly the moment it was announced.
Second, the agency aimed to cut emissions at least in half by 2050. But even
this watered-down goal is proving unreachable. The agency’s
own data
say emissions may
rise by 30 percent.
Compromised Away
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Rising seas threaten homes in the Marshall Islands, like those on
Ejit in the Majuro Atoll.
Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times
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When delegates met last October — five years after Mr. de Brum’s speech — the
organization had not taken any action. Proposals like speed limits had been
debated and rejected.
What remained was what several delegates called the “refrigerator rating” — a
score that, like those on American appliances, identified the clean and dirty
ships.
European delegates insisted that, for the system to work, low-scoring ships must
eventually be prohibited from sailing.
China and its allies wanted no such consequence.
So Sveinung Oftedal of Norway, the group’s chairman, told France and China to
meet separately and compromise.
Delegates worked across time zones, meeting over teleconferences because of the
Covid-19 pandemic. Shipping industry officials said they weighed in through the
night.
The Marshallese were locked out.
“We’re always being told ‘We hear you,’” Mr. Ishoda said. “But when it comes to
the details of the conversation, we’re told ‘We don’t need you to contribute.’”
Ultimately, France ceded to nearly all of China’s requests, records show. The
dirtiest ships would not be grounded. Shipowners would file plans saying they
intended to improve, would not be required
to actually improve.
German delegates were so upset that they threatened to oppose the deal, likely
triggering a cascade of defections, according to three people involved in the
talks. But European Union officials rallied countries behind the compromise,
arguing that Europe could not be seen as standing in the way of even limited
progress.
“At I.M.O., that is as always the choice,” said Damien Chevallier, the French
negotiator. “We have the choice to have nothing, or just to have a first step.”
All of this happened in secret. The I.M.O.’s summary of the meeting called it a
“major step forward.” Natasha Brown, a spokeswoman, said it would empower
customers and advocacy groups. “We know from consumer goods that the rating
system works,” she said.
But the regulation includes another caveat: The I.M.O. will not publish the
scores, letting shipping companies decide whether to say how dirty their ships
are.
A Storm on the Horizon
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Skies over the northeast Pacific Ocean streaked with clouds that
form around particles from ship exhausts.
Credit...NASA Earth Observatory
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Ms. Kabua, the Marshallese minister, is under no illusions that reclaiming the
diplomatic seat will lead to a climate breakthrough.
But if it works, she said, it might inspire other countries with private
registries to do the same. Countries could speak for themselves rather than
through a corporate filter.
Regardless of the outcome, the political winds are shifting. The European Union
is moving to include shipping in its emissions-trading system. The United
States, after years of being minor players at the agency, is re-engaging under
President Biden and recently suggested it may tackle shipping emissions itself.
Both would be huge blows to the I.M.O., which has long insisted that it alone
regulate shipping.
Suddenly, industry officials say they are eager to consider things like fuel
taxes or carbon.
“There’s much more of a sense of momentum and crisis,” said Mr. Platten, the
industry representative. “You can argue about, ‘Are we late to it,’ and all the
rest. But it is palpable.”
Behind closed doors, though, resistance remains. At a climate meeting last
winter, recordings show that the mere suggestion that shipping should become
sustainable sparked an angry response.
“Such statements show a lack of respect for the industry,” said Kostas G.
Gkonis, the director of the trade group Intercargo.
And just last week, delegates met in secret to debate what should constitute a
passing grade under the new rating system. Under pressure from China, Brazil and
others, the delegates set the bar so low that emissions can continue to rise —
at roughly the same pace as if there had been no regulation at all.
Delegates agreed to revisit the issue in five years.
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