During the World Leaders Summit at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27), Canada and the United States announced their joint work to facilitate the establishment of a Green Shipping Corridors Network in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway System.
Under the Initiative, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of State, and Transport Canada will work with state, provincial, local communities, private-sector, non-governmental leaders and Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the United States to host consultations with ports and other stakeholders, with the goal of facilitating the establishment of a Great Lakes Green Shipping Corridor Network.
The binational Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway System is a unique commercial waterway reaching into the heartland of North America, extending more than 3,700 km (2,000 mi) and containing more than 110 ports. More than 200 million tons of cargo travel on the waterway each year.
Green shipping corridors are a key means of spurring the early adoption of zero-emission fuels and technologies to place the shipping sector on a pathway to align with the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Through the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway System Green Shipping Corridor Network Initiative, Canada and the United States will work with industry to help facilitate the establishment of green corridors throughout the region, including by convening stakeholders and contributing to assessments and analyses relating to alternative fuels and power options within the system.
The Green Shipping Corridor Network Initiative builds on the work launched under the “Joint Statement by the U.S. Department of Transportation and Transport Canada on the Nexus between Transportation and Climate Change,” issued on February 25, 2021.
The governments view the Great Lakes – Saint Lawrence Seaway System Green Shipping Corridor Network Initiative as an important element in catalyzing development of the fuels and infrastructure needed to make the transition to low- and zero-emitting shipping, and, on both sides of the border, creating the jobs to make that fuel available and infrastructure development a reality. In the future the Initiative may expand to support green shipping corridors on U.S. and Canadian routes along both countries’ coasts, leverage experience from similar initiatives in other regions, and supplement regional and global efforts already underway. Source: Transport Canada
(photo of a ship approaching the entrance to the Seaway at the Saint-Lambert lock, Montreal: Shutterstock)
