This is a public event at COP31.
Following the adoption of the 2023 IMO Strategy on Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships, MEPC 83 approved, in April 2025, draft amendments to MARPOL Annex VI establishing the IMO Net-Zero Framework. At its second extraordinary session in October 2025, the Committee adjourned consideration of the adoption of the draft amendments for one year. MEPC 84 subsequently instructed the Intersessional Working Group on Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships (ISWG-GHG) to consider proposals on how to address concerns with the draft amendments, in line with the 2023 IMO GHG Strategy.
The discussions held since have brought several fault lines into focus: the stringency and evidentiary basis of the GFI reduction trajectory; the place of financial contributions among the compliance options, and of a centrally administered fund under MARPOL Annex VI; the predictability of support for a just and equitable transition; and the need for, and financing of, a dedicated incentive for zero or near-zero GHG emission technologies, fuels and/or energy sources (ZNZs).
ERCST has offered a draft text that follows as an independent contribution to that effort. It leaves intact the elements that command general support, namely the well-to-wake GFI metric, the sustainable fuels certification schemes, the reporting and verification cycle and the IMO GFI Registry, and concentrates on the elements on which views diverge. Rather than choosing between competing priorities, it seeks to accommodate them within a single architecture built on a single target annual GFI with a softer start and a review-based adjustment mechanism a broader set of compliance options a GFI Implementation Facility operating through two separate windows and enforcement at the national level.