International Maritime Organization

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The United Nations specialised agency responsible for the safety, security and environmental performance of international shipping, headquartered in London and operating through the adoption of conventions and of amendments to them by its member states. Its Marine Environment Protection Committee is the body that regulates ship emissions, and its instruments are unusual in international environmental law in being genuinely binding and genuinely enforced — through flag-state obligations and port-state control, an agreed amendment reaches essentially every ship trading internationally, which is not true of most climate commitments. In July 2023 the committee adopted a revised greenhouse gas strategy that set net-zero emissions from international shipping by or around 2050 as the objective, with indicative checkpoints for 2030 and 2040 and a stated intent to adopt mid-term measures including a technical fuel standard and an economic pricing mechanism. The negotiation of that pricing mechanism through 2025 and 2026 became one of the more consequential and contested episodes in international climate governance, because it would be the first global carbon price applied to an entire sector. This Journey deliberately does not assert its outcome. Its London headquarters is not a subject of this Journey and no coordinate is asserted here.

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