Page 154 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

ecuador’s banana sector under climate change: an economic and biophysical assessment to promote a sustainable and climate-compatible strategy
would likely contribute to a major structural change in the supply chain and lessen the carbon footprint. There may be other areas for change in addition to the extension of storage life.49
4.1 Transportation by sea
Ocean shipping is a leading source of GHG emissions in relation to imported bananas. The Kyoto Protocol explicitly excludes international air and maritime transportation from national emission targets, which are under the purview
of the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), respectively. Attention has recently focused on civil aviation emissions due to EU efforts to request flights in and out of EU Member States to submit emission permits in an attempt to impose a unilateral adjustment to border taxes. The opposition from countries outside of the EU, however, has halted the EU’s unilateral efforts and has shifted the locus for negotiation from Brussels to the International Civil Aviation Organization as a more appropriate multilateral forum.
The IMO is the international forum for GHG mitigation relating to maritime transportation. Bodansky (2011) notes that the IMO is unusual among organizations under the United Nations, since it requires a qualified majority
of votes, whereas most other organizations are based on consensus, which allows an individual member to veto or delay negotiation. The IMO’s instrument for environmental regulation is MARPOL, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, which has been in force since 1973 and has been subsequently amended various times. The fact that voting now takes place with a qualified majority facilitates the decision-making of the IMO. In 2011, for example, the IMO adopted mandatory emission standards for new ships by a
49 to 5 vote, with Brazil, Chile, China, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in opposition (IMO, 2011).50 This indicates that the IMO can arrive at a consensus on an emission tax for maritime transport ahead of the adoption of similar broad GHG abatement measures by other international conventions, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols. Given that major banana import markets already impose substantial energy levies, the control of emissions relating to maritime shipping could result in the most significant climate policy outcome that the banana supply chain would be confronted with, given the reliance on maritime transportation.
The energy efficiency relating to maritime shipping is expressed in grams of CO2 equivalents per tonne-km of product shipped. Table 52 indicates the carbon footprint per tonne-km for bananas, calculated from data in the three LCA studies relating to key shipping routes. These values are higher than those for other
There are technological innovations that can increase the storage life of the banana by slowing the ripening process (ACS, 2012). It is not known, however, whether these innovations can be scaled up to become commercially viable.
50 The IMO has also expanded MARPOL Annex VI (Regulations for the Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships), to reduce the GHG emission of sulfur oxides (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). There is, however, no agreement to date regarding CO2.
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