2 - Global Civil Aviation Emissions Standards

Summary

The protection of the environment is one of the main components of sustainability and, hence, securing sustainable development of aviation requires initiatives from the aviation industry to lessen the environmental impacts of aviation while ensuring smooth growth of the industry. Emissions from civil aviation have become a great environmental concern, since such emissions pollute the environment, exacerbate climate change and are rapidly increasing with the fast growth of the aviation industry. Hence, emissions from aviation have to be reduced to protect the environment. This chapter addresses the question of whether or not the current global civil aviation emissions standards are sufficient to ensure sustainable development in the aviation industry and argues that these standards are not sufficient. The Chicago Convention has not set any such standards. The standards set by Volumes II and III of Annex 16 to the Convention are not binding and suffer from lack of modern effective provisions dealing with emissions from aviation. The ICAO’s basket of measures in their current state cannot effectively reduce emissions from aviation. The difficulties that are hindering effective implementation of this basket have to be immediately addressed and solved.