Revisiting the role of private voluntary standards and initiatives in decarbonising shipping

Private voluntary action and governance, referred to as ‘private standards’ have the potential to address social and environmental challenges such as climate change. Previous research on the role of private standards in decarbonising shipping showed that they suffered from low levels of transparency, ambition and data reliability, undermining the environmental effectiveness of the standards. In this study, content analysis revealed that the recently implemented private standards are more transparent, reliable, and ambitious than previous standards and interviews revealed the key drivers for this improvement. Interviews revealed the drivers for improvement include customer or stakeholder value chain pressure to be more environmental-friendly and the need for a shared reporting methodology. The involvement of neutral facilitators, diverse range of stakeholders, academic actors and science helped to improve the ambition and coverage of the private standards. The IMO’s GHG strategies have also been a catalyst for private sector action albeit at a collective level through private standards. However, a critical evaluation of these standards shows that there remain significant shortcomings and challenges in most of the standards across all three criteria. With the Revised IMO GHG strategy and the weak policy measures just agreed and set to be implemented in a couple of years, private standards have a greater responsibility for early and ambitious action to enable the sector’s transition during the emergence phase.