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University of the South Pacific
Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport
OUR SUSTAINABILITY GOALS
ABOUT US
Iokwe and welcome to the Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport. This exciting initiative from the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the University of the South Pacific is our vehicle to achieving the transport emissions reduction targets set under the Paris Agreement. In doing so, we want to act as a catalyst for our friends and neighbors in other Pacific island states. The Majuro Declaration on Climate Leadership that the Pacific leaders signed in 2013 calls on all actors, large and small, to be climate change leaders. No matter that the emissions of the Marshall Islands are miniscule on a global scale, we are determined to lead by example. Shipping and sea transport is the very lifeline of our maritime atoll nation and our ocean region. While addressing the effects of climate change is the great challenge of our generation, in the transport sector it is also the opportunity to move to new, green, more affordable and appropriate solutions. MCST has been established as a Center of Excellence to oversee and coordinate our national program of action as we transition to a low carbon transport future for the Marshall Islands and the Pacific region. The MCST is a regional resource. It has the support of our neighbors and a growing partnership with researchers and innovators worldwide. If, with your help, we succeed in achieving a whole of country transition to a low carbon transport future, these lessons can then be cascaded to our neighbors throughout the Pacific and beyond.
HOW WE CONTRIBUTE TO A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY
The Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport is an initiative of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the University of the South Pacific (USP). Our vision is a center of excellence to prepare and implement a whole of country strategy to transition the Marshall Islands to a low carbon transport future as a pilot and catalyst for other Micronesian and small island states. It is a unique program and approach to addressing the need for Pacific states to transition to transport decarbonisation pathways.
The MCST Framework sets out a structured fifteen-year program to achieve this. MCST provides a space for willing partners to collaborate on research, analysis and implementation of practical projects within a common program under this Framework.
In many instances, the MCST formalizes and consolidates already existing research and project networks that have been active in this space now since 2013. We welcome all those who have been our active supporters and collaborators to date and invite new partners to join this circle. With its physical home at the USP Long Island Campus in Majuro, the MCST knowledge portal provides connectivity between a number of related international programs and our work here in the Pacific on low carbon transport transition.
The MCST was the brainchild of the late Hon. Tony de Brum and brings together two related strands of work: RMI’s work on NDCs and international shipping targets and USP’s Sustainable Sea Transport Research Program.
RMI government transport reduction commitments were signaled in the 2013 Majuro Declaration on Climate Leadership and were followed with the RMI’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. RMI is the first Pacific Island Country to set an unconditional target for national transport emissions reduction (16% by 2025/27% by 2030). Achieving this is expected to also deliver improved connectivity for Marshallese and Pacific communities through access to more appropriate and affordable low carbon shipping options. RMI and USP have established The MCST has been established as the primary tool for delivering RMI’s Transport NDC and as a catalyst for regional transition.
These national actions are complimented in the international arena by the work RMI and other likeminded Pacific states have committed to under the IMO Shipping Emissions Reduction Roadmap. RMI and its partners have been active participants since the RMI sponsored submission to IMO’s MEPC68 in 2015 which called for international shipping to adopt a sectoral target for emissions reduction commensurate with a no more than 1.5oC global warming limit. Working within a Shipping High Ambition Coalition, this Pacific effort has been widely credited as a key catalyst for the MEPC72 decision to set a decarbonation target of at least 50% by 2050 with ambition for 100%. MCST, works collaboratively with University College London researchers to provide technical, research and logistical backstopping to this Pacific grouping.
USP hosted the 1st international Sustainable Sea Transport Talanoa (SSTT2012), the first regional workshop on this subject since 1985 and repeated in 2014 (SSTT2014). Our research program has contributed ground breaking research into various aspects of Pacific low carbon shipping transition with leading international research centers.
In 2015 UNCTAD requested USP to prepare an online interactive toolkit of information, knowledge and research to support decision-makers, policy writers, planners and researchers in Small Island States pursing low carbon shipping agendas. USP won the Shipping Industry Innovative Research Award at the 2016 Shipbuilding, Machinery & Marine Technology conference in Hamburg in recognition of our research record. In 2017 USP announced establishment of the MCST as one of its voluntary commitments to the first UN Oceans Summit in New York. Today, MCST collaborates closely with partners and colleagues in several leading research programs in this field around the world.
TO MAKE A BIGGER IMPACT WE COULD USE
Getting global agreement on a pathway to transport decarbonisation commensurate with no more than 1.5oC global warming and decarbonizing the current and future transport of small island states is no small undertaking. Yet our task can nothing less.
Achieving this unaided is beyond the capacity of RMI or any Pacific island state. It is for this reason that our highest priority is partnerships – with other states, other researchers, innovators, industry, private sector, NGOs and civil society. We have proved the value of this approach in the IMO and we continue to work in this manner in other related arenas, such as the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition.
Ours is a multi-disciplinary approach. Demonstrating a paradigm shift in transport emissions, especially at the micro-scale of Pacific Island States, requires not only a change in technologies but work in economics, policy, planning, cultural renaissance. Transport, particularly maritime and aviation, is the very lifeline of our maritime region. Current options are all fossil fuel powered, often old, poorly maintained and expensive to purchase and operate. As the most fossil fuel import dependent region in the world (95%) and with transport using around 70% of the region’s fuel, such dependency is crippling for regional budgets. The up-side is that a deep decarbonisation agenda could offer the possibility to transition to more appropriate, more affordable transport scenarios for many island countries and communities. But realizing this requires careful planning based on best available science. We are grateful for the support already shown by numerous researchers and centers of excellence in this regard, but more is and will always be necessary.
Achieving a paradigm shift will require investment. We are unsure of just how much this will cost – the island transport decarbonisation discourse is still nascent – but in contrast, the regional investment by donors, development agencies, and bilateral partners in decarbonizing electricity generation is currently in excess of $2billion. Electricity is responsible for some 20% of regional fuel burn. Regional investment in transport decarbonisation however would not currently exceed $20million.
Investment in research, long-term local capacity development and ‘proof of concept’ trials of new technologies appropriate to the transport needs specific to our island locales offers as a logical starting point and we have a range of such to choose from. These include designs for retro-fits and newbuilds for various scales of shipping from village to international carriers, Wing-in-Ground craft, dirigibles, land transport options, replacement fuels, including bio-fuels and ultimately hydrogen.
Pacific transport needs are often unique and so solutions need to be tailored – International solutions do not always transfer neatly or effectively. We have no rail, no meta-urban centers, no inland waterways and little excess electricity generation potential (some of our countries do not have rivers, others have no airports for example). In some cases, this means existing solutions must be adapted, in other new solutions sought.
TO HELP OTHER ECO-INITIATIVES WE ARE OFFERING
The Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport is a Pacific-based resource created to service Pacific countries and communities.
MCST includes a range of expertise, both in-house and via our partnerships and academic networks in research, education, policy, analysis and technology. By way of examples, MCST is currently advising GGGI and the government of Fiji on the maritime sector component of their Low Emissions Development Strategy; working with various governments on the implications of carbon levies for reducing international shipping emissions; collaborating with a major shipping line in the design and operation of a 300 ton low-carbon cargo ship to revitalize regional copra trading; and working on designs for sail-powered village-scale passenger/cargo ferries to be operated as model blue/green businesses.
A central feature of the MCST is the development of a knowledge portal to provide free to air, two-way access to and from island governments and communities of all relevant science, publications, news, toolkits, data and other resources. We are incrementally linking this portal to others within our network, for example the UNCTAD hosted online interactive toolkit of information, knowledge and research.
MCST researchers have published and presented widely. For example, we led an international team undertaking a technical review of the role of renewable energy in world shipping for RENA in 2015.
MCST also collaborates closely with other partners to provide workshops and forums. Since 2015 we have supported the RMI government and the Pacific Islands Development Forum in holding regular Talanoa updating the region on our work in the IMO. In 2017 we hosted the Korean government’s’ Blue/Green Pacific Symposium in Majuro. In 2018 we facilitated a capacity development training workshop for Pacific IMO delegations. MCST is facilitating organization of the Pacific Regional Transport Forum and Expo to be hosted by USP and the government of RMI and Fiji in November 2018.
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