Aviation Emissions Must be Capped, Says Broad Group of Experts

(WASHINGTON – Aug 29, 2016) In advance of a key meeting of the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), leading industry, policy, and legal experts are calling for a cap on carbon pollution from international aviation. The 2015 Paris climate agreement does not specify how this major source of climate pollution should be addressed. In a special issue of Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR), the experts write that a warming climate is a risk to the aviation industry’s safety and operations, and countries have a critical opportunity to agree this fall to a market-based measure to limit emissions from international flights.

Aviation would become the first global sector with a market-based cap on carbon emissions if, by the end of the two-week triennial meeting of ICAO’s General Assembly on October 7, countries agree to the market-based measure to limit pollution from international flights at 2020 levels. Without policy intervention, carbon pollution from airplanes is forecasted to triple by 2050.

“Aviation emissions must be capped and cut. We rightly celebrated after the Paris agreement, but this is major unfinished business. This fall’s ICAO Assembly is a critical moment for countries, and the aviation industry, to demonstrate leadership in providing international air travel while reducing risks to the climate. These articles illustrate the need for and feasibility of a strong market-based measure,” said Pamela Campos, senior attorney at Environmental Defense Fund and the special editor of CCLR’s special issue on aviation and climate change.

Aviation’s total global warming impacts are more than double those from its CO2 emissions, or equivalent to 5% of total radiative forcing from carbon dioxide. A scientific assessment published in this issue shows that nitrogen oxide emissions and aviation’s impacts on clouds add significantly to the warming effect of carbon dioxide.

Without new policies, aviation emissions could compromise the goal of the Paris agreement to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 – 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 

If countries don’t agree to the market-based measure in October, there may not be another chance for action on aviation pollution until ICAO’s next General Assembly in 2019. 

“Reaching agreement on the global market-based measure will be a huge achievement,” Judith Ritchie, First Secretary of Transport Policy at the British Embassy in Washington from 2009-2014, said in the preface of the CCLR issue. “We have much to gain but even more to lose. ICAO as an institution risks undermining its credibility if it cannot secure agreement from its member states to a market-based measure this year. Failure to reach agreement would represent a very real step backwards for an industry that has always been at the forefront of initiative and endeavor.”