In 1997 the parties to the Kyoto Protocol agreed that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international aviation should be ‘limited’ or ‘reduced’ working through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a UN agency responsible for setting international standards for civil aviation.
Since Kyoto, ICAO has failed to deliver or agree any mandatory global policies to mitigate emissions. The Organisation closed the door, one by one, on almost every conceivable market
measure for reducing aviation’s emissions and now, under pressure to act, is deeply divided over adopting a global solution.
The following timeline shows the sluggish progress made in the ICAO, while CO2 emissions from aviation have been growing 4.3% on average per year between 1999 and 2009 and today aviation alone accounts for 4.9% of the cumulative climate change impact of human activities.
ICAO’s High Level Group needs to make rapid progress resolving issues and the ICAO Council needs to have a global proposal ready by the June Council in order for the triennial Assembly in September 2013 to be able to agree a global measure and the Framework. Failure to act at the Assembly would trigger automatic reinstatement of the full provisions of the EU ETS and confirm ICAO’s status as having failed on climate change.