August 2008: The latest issue of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Journal features, inter alia, an article by Jane Hupe, Secretary to the ICAO Council Committee on Aviation Environmental
Protection (CAEP), entitled “En Route to Copenhagen: International Aviation
Action on Climate Change,” in which she outlines the technical, economic, legal
and social implications of the various measures being considered to reduce
emissions from the aviation sector.

She emphasizes that studies identified an open and global
emissions trading system as the most efficient market option to address
aviation emissions and described ICAO’s work in this field. Noting that ICAO
and UNFCCC are carrying out separate but parallel streams of activity that will
culminate at the end of 2009, she stresses the need for increased consultation
and cooperation between the two organizations. She provides an overview of
ongoing activities of the ICAO and of the Group on International Aviation and
Climate Change (GIACC), highlighting the invitation of the UNFCCC to the
GIACC’s second meeting and the recent launch of the ICAO Carbon Calculator for
use in carbon-offsetting programmes.
Among future challenges, she identifies
the need to: enhance outreach activities; define how international aviation
will participate in the next climate change; and promote collaboration within
each member State. In another piece entitled “International Aviation and the
Global Environment: How ICAO has Made Climate Change a Priority Issue,” Celia
Alves Rodrigues and Blandine Ferrier, ICAO Environment Unit, outline current
and future ICAO activities aimed at helping the aviation community to address
the climate change issue.
Finally, Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary,
offers a message stressing the need for an agreement on stronger international
climate change action in Copenhagen that matches the clear signal given by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, namely
stopping the rise in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 10 to 15 years and
cutting back global emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050.
Noting that
aviation is not covered by the Kyoto Protocol regime, he identifies setting up
a carbon market for aviation as the most cost-effective option for the sector
to cut back its emissions. He describes the success of the carbon market and
the Protocol’s three market-based mechanisms and urges linking the ICAO and the
UNFCCC discussions. [The Journal]