New open-access tool shows IMO delegations what the NZF policy options could mean for trade costs in their country

Delegations preparing for the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 85, 30 November to 4 December 2026) have had to weigh the Net Zero Framework (NZF) without country-level impact data for many of the economies most exposed to both shipping costs and climate change. For many low income countries and especially Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States, only regionally aggregated results have been available.

Researchers at the UCL Shipping and Oceans Research Group have released the NZF Impact Tracker to close that gap. Free and publicly available at www.shippingandoceans.com/nzf-impact-tracker, it lets users compare, for any country of interest, the likely changes in maritime transport costs and the prices of traded goods across a range of policy options currently under consideration, and compare those changes against the costs of climate change expected by 2050.

The tracker covers 136 coastal countries, including 26 Least Developed Countries and 36 Small Island Developing States. Building upon methods developed during the IMO-led Comprehensive Impact Assessment, it combines UN Comtrade data with 4th IMO GHG Study activity data to estimate NZF economic impacts on over ten million individual trade flows and across hundreds of commodities on the importer and exporter side of trade.

This story was originally published by Hellenic Shipping News. Read the full story at Hellenic Shipping News →