Roadmap urges yachting to reach net zero by 2050
Water Revolution Foundation unveils Roadmap 2050 to achieve net zero.
Businesses across the lifecycle of superyachts are being urged to get on board with a quest to achieve net zero by 2050.
A voluntary charter named Roadmap 2050, unveiled by environmental group Water Revolution Foundation after its third annual summit in Lerici, Italy last month, strives to make yachting “regenerative”.
The gathering of top yachting industry CEOs “aimed to spark innovation, forward thinking, competition, collaboration and standardisation”, said the foundation.
“The Roadmap 2050 is a compass to navigate together through what are, undeniably, unchartered waters. Yachting can and should be proactive and openly commit to net zero, by latest 2050,” said Robert van Tol, executive director of the foundation. “Coordination and collaboration is key to accomplish this.”
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The foundation and key stakeholders aim to set environmental targets across the design, build, operation and refit phases, including investment decisions and lifecycle strategies, split into five-year increments to reach net zero by 2050.
Addressing measures to offset emissions, Van Tol said compensatory schemes should not be the starting point but certainly should be included.
“Reduction efforts of negative impacts should always come first,” he said.
Environmental advocate Celine Cousteau told the meeting in her keynote speech: “Regenerative practices in the yachting industry are essential for the health of our oceans and the well-being of future generations. This industry possesses the power, influence, and resources to lead by example. If yachting can transform, no other sector will have an excuse not to follow.”
Recently, British TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough told the UK’s Prince William the general damage being done to the world’s oceans is “unspeakably awful”.
“If you did anything remotely like it on land, everybody would be up in arms,” he said ahead of the United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, France.
Net zero is an ideal state where planet-warming gas emissions released into the Earth’s atmosphere are balanced by those removed. Last year the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and those of other harmful “greenhouse” gases were more than 50% higher than before humans started burning fossil fuels. This is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to warm quickly, causing climate change.
Nearly 200 countries agreed at a UN meeting in Paris in 2015 to set a target to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels to prevent catastrophic climate change. But scientists reported that in 2024 this threshold was breached for the first time.
