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A landmark deal to clean up the global shipping industry’s emissions has been postponed for at least a year, after a successful campaign by the US and Saudi Arabia to delay its adoption.
In April 2025, governments provisionally agreed the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Net-Zero Framework (NZF), which would penalise high-emitting ships around the world and use the money to fund the transition to cleaner vessels and fuels.
An extraordinary set of talks was called in London this week where the plan was for the new system to be formally adopted. But, after a bad-tempered four days of discussions, governments voted narrowly for a Saudi Arabian proposal to postpone the decision for a year.
The NZF was scheduled to set emissions reduction targets for ships starting in 2028. But this – and the rest of the framework’s timeline – have now been plunged into doubt. Although some technical work can continue, political progress will have to wait until October 2026 when delegates will next take up the issue of whether to adopt the NZF.
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‘Catastrophic’ for confidence
Ralph Regenvanu, minister of climate change for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, said the decision to delay the NZF is “unacceptable” given the urgency of accelerating climate change. He added that, according to a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), climate action is not optional under international law.
“The IMO’s failure to adopt the framework this week marks a failure of this United Nations agency to act decisively on climate change. This makes the road to Bélem and beyond more difficult. But we know that we have international law on our side and will continue to fight for our people and the planet,” said Regenvanu.
Climate campaigners and researchers also lamented the delay. University College London shipping professor Tristan Smith said the decision was “catastrophic for confidence, and therefore also for the equitable and ambitious decarbonisation we need”.
“Those with the means must step up and lead more than ever, until this multilateral process can regain its composure,” he added. The European Union, for example, is implementing its own regulations similar to the NZF, called Fuel EU.
John Maggs, the Clean Shipping Coalition’s representative at the IMO, said that “governments serious about climate action must spend the next 12 months rallying every nation that supports the framework, convincing those who are on the fence, or opposing, that its adoption is the only sane way forward.”
The World Shipping Council, an international trade association, emphasised the importance of using the year ahead to clarify and develop the IMO Net-Zero Framework, adding that the IMO’s greenhouse gas strategy and the industry’s investment trajectory “remain aligned toward net-zero by 2050”.
“A globally agreed framework is needed to provide a level playing field to get there,” it added in a statement. “The liner industry is committed to the goal of net-zero by 2050 and has invested $150 billion in ships designed to run on green fuels.”
Trump’s threats
Ahead of the meeting, the US government had threatened a series of measures targeting government officials who supported the NZF and threatening to make it difficult and expensive for those countries’ ships to call at US ports.
A joint statement by the US transport and foreign ministers said: “We will fight hard to protect our economic interests by imposing costs on countries if they support the NZF. Our fellow IMO members should be on notice.”
And on Thursday, President Donald Trump tried to intervene directly in the IMO process, urging countries to vote against what he called “this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping” and “a Green New Scam Bureaucracy”. In a post on his Truth Social platform, he suggested that the NZF would lead to higher prices for American consumers, adding that the US “will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form”.
After the vote was postponed, Bob Ward from the Grantham Institute on Climate Change criticised “the bullying by the United States government” which he said “proves that the Trump administration is a threat to the well-being and prosperity of people across the globe.”
A week of procedural politics
Back in April, governments voted 63 to 16 in favour of the NZF – with several Pacific countries abstaining as they said it lacked ambition. But many of the nations that backed the NZF in April supported the postponement of talks this week.
They included major economies like China, India, Colombia and Kenya, but also many small nations reliant on their shipping registries such as Liberia, Bahamas, Panama and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Others – like New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Cyprus and Greece – abstained.
Those opposing the postponement were mainly European and Pacific countries as well as pro-climate action Latin American nations like Chile, Brazil and Mexico.
The four days of talks were marked by procedural wrangling, with the US and Saudi alliance trying to block the adoption of the agenda on the first day, and then attempting to amend the procedure for adopting the NZF on the second and third.
At the start of Friday – the last day of talks – Brazil’s negotiator proposed a vote on the NZF itself. Singapore then raised the prospect of voting for an adjournment of talks, before Saudi Arabia called for a vote on that plan.
The two sides debated for hours – first in the open meeting and then privately with the head of the IMO Arsenio Dominguez at the front of the room – which vote should be taken first.
After a break for lunch, the IMO decided to hold the postponement vote first. While 49 nations voted against, 57 voted to postpone the decision for a year, giving them the majority. Twenty-one countries abstained and eight were not present.
2030 target to cut emissions still in place
Brazil’s proposed vote on the NZF never took place and their lead negotiator politely declined to be interviewed by Climate Home News as he left the venue, after consolations from negotiators on his side of the debate.
While its adoption has been delayed, technical work on the NZF will continue, starting next week. Issues to be discussed include how the emissions intensities of different fuels should be judged and how the money raised by the levies on fuels should be spent and governed.
Speaking to journalists after the adjournment, IMO head Arsenio Dominguez remained upbeat. “The framework is still there and the member states are still talking,” he said, adding that the target agreed in 2023 to reduce global shipping’s emissions by 20% – while striving for 30% – on 2022 levels by 2030 remains in effect.
The post US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal appeared first on Climate Home News.
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022.)
Total emissions edge up as land-use emissions rise
Total global CO2 emissions, which combines fossil fuels and land-use change, are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026, up from 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
The increase in 2026 comes entirely from a projected rise in land-use emissions, which are more challenging to estimate than fossil emissions.
(The global carbon budget groups emissions from fossil fuels and cement production as “fossil emissions”. Carbon Brief follows this convention throughout this piece.)
If land-use emissions had stayed at 2025 levels, total emissions would have fallen slightly in 2026 to around 42.6GtCO2.
Each edition of the global carbon budget updates the historical record as new data and methods become available. The chart below shows total emissions in this year’s budget compared with the five previous editions.
