COP15 froze; Shipping drifted away - A climate summit wrap-up

The media's take on COP15 fall-out ranged from consternation to sorrow to vain hope-pinning

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Scanpix/Henrik Montgomery 

Here are some takes on COP15 from major marine media and pundits:

• Shipping left frustrated by COP15, says Lloyd's List's Craig Eason. "The IMO presented its tool box of measures.... It remains to be seen how persuasive they really were. Industry sources have told Lloyd's List they are keen to see the IMO continue...but to do so with more conviction now that this climate meeting is over and the accord text is so weak."
• Fairplay has the IMO's Mitropoulos defending its efforts at COP15. "He noted that the accord published by the UN was met with measured satisfaction by the IMO. Mitropoulos called the accord a step in the right direction towards a legally binding agreement." [italics attributed by Fairplay]
• Shipping in cold after Copenhagen, thunders TradeWinds in its COP15 wrap-up editorial. "Political failure in Copenhagen has left shipowners and the global maritime industry facing even greater uncertainty than anticipated over the future impact of regulations to limit climate change."
• BIMCO took a ligher view of proceedings: "Shipping played a larger role than expected during the two weeks of negotiations." And added: "No decision was made at COP15 regarding shipping, but the debate will have a large impact....and as such COP15 has changed the setting for future negotiations regarding shipping." Pretty different from the media's take, in other words.
• One could taste the bitterness of Lloyd's Register's expert blogger Anne Marie Warris, who wrote: "So is the outcome setting the stage? And what did we get? So where are we today....Well not where we wanted to be, no indication that we may get a paradigm shift and the lego brick tower seems like the tower of Babylon to have collapsed at the end. On the international bunker fuel discussions we got no decision."
• Seas at Risk labels COP15 a failure and calls for a look to alternatives: "The failure of COP15 to progress the issue of GHG emissions from shipping should be seen as a green light for the EU to push ahead with an emissions trading scheme for ships visiting EU ports."
• Indonesia Shipping Gazette is frank: "the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) turned out to be a near fiasco....The painstaking and detailed work undertaken by the shipping community and presented by the IMO got nowhere near the table."
• Clay Maitland's blog strikes a diplomatic note: "Even for such a skimpy document, looked at in detail, a significant change of tone is evident....What should fire up the IMO - as well as the EU, US, EPA et al - is that the agreement signals that the negotiations will continue in smaller streams in parallel directions but on much shorter timescales."
• In this blog, I will reserve judgement on the outcome of COP15, but stand by earlier damning of the IMO's shabby COP15 rhetoric, wobbly industry arguments and Lloyd's List's disinclination to hype its own COP15 blog.