“Cut Shipping’s Black Carbon to Protect the Arctic”: Clean Arctic Alliance Response to ICCI & UNEP Overshoot & Cryosphere Reports

Responding to publication of two reports, Overshoot and the Cryosphere: Averting Global Meltdown and State of the Cryosphere 2026: The Cost of Overshoot by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which find that overshooting the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target, which is now inevitable, will cause large-scale, and perhaps irreversible changes, to melting ice sheets, glaciers, permafrost, sea ice and polar oceans, Dr Sian Prior, Lead Advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance said:

“These reports acknowledge that global impacts and risks from the loss of snow and ice systems – the cryosphere – increases with every fraction of a degree of warming and that humans and the environment face greater risks from the melting of the cryosphere. The Arctic and Antarctic polar ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica are melting about six times faster now than 30 years ago.”

“Meanwhile, with the shipping industry currently responsible for some 3% of global GHG emissions as well as increasing emissions of the short-lived climate forcing pollutants black carbon and methane – recognised by the Overshoot report as having a disproportionate impact in the Arctic, it is essential that the sector immediately intensify efforts to rapidly reduce its climate impact through cutting emissions – and this means cleaner fuels and decarbonisation.”

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