Transporting commodities around the world in today’s globalized production-to-consumption systems generates large amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants, on top of those associated with producing the commodities themselves. Maritime shipping generated an estimated 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalent) per year in 2007–2012. It was also responsible for around 15% of anthropogenic nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions and 5–8% of anthropogenic sulphur oxides (SOx) emissions – making it a major source of air pollution potentially affecting people in countries along shipping routes, as most emissions are released within 400 kilometres of shore.
Despite this, emissions from maritime shipping have been largely overlooked in discussions on climate mitigation and on sustainable consumption and production. This situation urgently needs to change, given that maritime shipping emissions are forecast to rise between 35% and 210% by 2050.