The Maritime Resilience Breakthroughs: A consolidated action agenda to future proof the sector

Maritime shipping, responsible for transporting 90% of global trade, provides a crucial link between communities and the global supply networks needed to support health, well-being and livelihoods. It is also a major contributor to greenhouse gases, with maritime vessels responsible for 3% of the world’s annual emissions. The industry has made important strides toward decarbonization, including a series of ambitious commitments at COP26 to reduce emissions in alignment with IPCC guidance to maintain global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius. This race to zero must remain a priority.

Yet maritime infrastructure is increasingly exposed to shocks and stresses, and the risk of highly consequential disruptions in service, including from climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, and the urgent need for social and environmental equity. These cumulative disruptions to global supply chains undermine economies and societies, raising the cost of living, creating political instability, and making it harder to respond to climate pressures both in and out of the sector. Urgent adaptation is needed. COP27 marks a turning point in maritime shipping’s race to resilience.

Many actors are working to improve aspects of the sector’s resilience. High-impact solutions are emerging, but they are not linked by a common framework and set of targets to coordinate action at scale, or by metrics to evaluate progress. Accelerating the pace and scale of the resilience transition will require a consolidated action agenda. This is the objective of the Maritime Resilience Breakthroughs, launched at COP27. These are the first resilience breakthroughs to emerge from the maritime sector, making it the first sector to elaborate a complementary mitigation and resilience framework.

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