Brussels, 08/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - A group of 25 environmental NGOs from all over the world (including Can Europe, CDM Watch, Concerned Citizens against Climate Change, Environmental Defence Fund, Milieudefensie FoE Netherlands, Oxfam) leapt into the fray, on Wednesday 7 November, to call on the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to step up its efforts to finalise, in 2013, the details for a future global aviation market-based measure (MBM) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from air transport. This, they believe, is the best way to put an end to the trade war shaping up between the EU and third countries that criticise the ETS directive for including aviation in the EU emission quota exchange system since January this year.
The appeal was launched in an open letter addressed to the ICAO secretary general, the president of the ICAO Council and the ICAO permanent representatives on the eve of the ICAO Council meeting of 9 November that must decide on the future global aviation MBM that will mean international aviation will have to contribute to the fight against climate change.
ICAO had announced a proposal by the end of the year, then for March 2013, and those signing the letter write: “The world is waiting. Timing is crucial. NGOs and industry agree, as indeed does the EU which signalled nine months ago that it was ready to adapt its legislation to any adequate ICAO agreement”.
The NGOs consider it imperative for the meeting this week to take the necessary political decisions that will enable the next triennial assembly in September 2013 to agree on the specific details of an ICAO global MBM. “This means that the March 2013 Council must be enabled to decide on all key parameters. Missing this timetable means ICAO will have again failed to meet its defining environmental responsibility”, the NGOs warn.
The ICAO Council is therefore urged by the NGOs to agree, this week, on a timetable and to guarantee by March that any global MBM corresponds to high environmental demands; that entities taking part in an MBM should be operators, not states; that any MBM should include all airline emissions in a carbon-pricing mechanism while respecting differentiation; that resolving developing country concerns be a key priority and, therefore; that any MBM should include revenue generation which is capable of being used both for international climate finance - such as assisting climate action in developing countries via the Green Climate Fund) - and for further emissions reduction measures within the aviation sector. (AN/transl.jl)