Despite the common challenge of reaching the Paris Agreement climate goals, countries are at different stages of development with different levels of capability. Most developing countries face significant capacity challenges that undermine their ability to achieve their intended climate actions. The Paris Agreement acknowledges technical co-operation and capacity building as a fundamental prerequisite to enable governments and stakeholders to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change.

Technical co-operation and capacity-building measures provide technical assistance, strengthen local and national capacities and promote knowledge creation and management. These measures share experience and good practice and establish professional networks to promote technical and policy dialogue.

In the maritime transport sector, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has been active in technical co-operation and capacity building.  It is also one of the candidate measures in the Initial IMO GHG Strategy on the reduction of GHG emissions from ships adopted in 2018.

The IMO highlighted that to achieve significant GHG emissions reductions in shipping, it is imperative to address barriers to implementation and support countries with special needs to fully implement IMO’s regulatory framework. IMO’s various programmes, notably the Integrated Technical Co-operation Programme (ITCP), provide advisory services and technical assistance to member states and to developing countries to ensure that they can become involved in the transfer of energy efficiency technologies in the shipping sector.

IMO also co-ordinates the development of new and innovative external partnerships. It promotes innovation for maritime decarbonisation and implements a growing portfolio of long-term projects. For example, to support the needs of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), IMO, together with the Republic of Korea, has developed and launched a Sustainable Maritime Transport Training Programme to support capacity-building to implement the GHG Strategy in SIDS and LDCs; the GHG Smart Programme.

Following on the success of the GEF-IMO-UNDP Global Maritime Energy Efficiency Partnerships (GloMEEP) project, the IMO-Norway GreenVoyage2050 project promotes global efforts to demonstrate and test technical solutions for reducing GHG emissions.

IMO has founded five Maritime Technology Co-operation Centres (MTCCs) in Latin America, the Caribbean, Pacific, Asia and Africa, with financial assistance from the European Union. The five MTCCs constitute the Global MTCC Network (GMN), which implements the IMO project “Capacity Building for Climate Mitigation in the Maritime Shipping Industry” (GMN project). This network promotes the uptake of low-carbon technologies and operations in maritime transport in developing countries seeking to limit GHG emissions from shipping through technical assistance and capacity building.

The IMO, together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Government of Norway, organised the IMO-UNEP-Norway Zero- and Low-Emission Innovation Forum in September 2021. The Forum served as a global platform to exchange best practices between competent international policy makers, maritime, climate change and environmental administrations, technology developers, the maritime industry, ports and finance. It stimulated collaboration and innovation for climate action with a focus on developing countries.

The IMO-EBRD-World Bank co-led Financing Sustainable Maritime Transport (FIN-SMART) Roundtable fed inputs into this Forum and, from its 2020 launch, provided a platform for regular dialogue among key maritime stakeholders and financial institutions. Topics included investment risks and opportunities and potential financial solutions to support maritime decarbonisation, focusing on developing countries, LDCs and SIDS.