Airline industry praises emissions deal
Environmental groups less keen on climate change pact
MONTREAL — It was an eye-of-the-beholder deal — hailed as a watershed moment by some and as a disappointment by others.
The airline industry heaped lavish praise on a last-minute deal on climate change reached late Thursday at the 38th triennial general assembly of Montreal’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), the Montreal-based global airline lobby, called it “a landmark agreement,” while A4A (Airlines for America, the U.S. lobby), deemed it “an historical environmental resolution.”
NGOs and environmental lobby groups were more reserved, calling it a disappointment. ICAO itself called the agreement “a historic milestone” and a “landmark.”
But most agreed it was progress of sorts — no dazzling breakthrough, to be sure, but progress nonetheless, of the incremental kind that’s common in international forums.
The heart of the deal is its adoption of the principle of a global market-based mechanism (MBM) to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions caused by the world’s civil aircraft.
Many years in the making, ICAO’s final text said it has decided “to develop” such a mechanism, and that it is still committed to carbon-neutral growth by 2020.
Tony Tyler, director general of IATA, said in a statement that “today was a great day for aviation, for the effort against climate change and for global standards and international co-operation. … Now we have a strong mandate and a short threeyear time frame to sort out the details. Airlines need and want a global MBM.”
“A global (market-based mechanism) complements progress on improving technology, operations and infrastructure in the industry’s long-established fourpillar strategy to manage aviation’s climate change impact.”
In practice, the formidable task of haggling starts now and will last three years — at least — to hash out the details and terms of a global mechanism to be presented to the next general assembly, in 2016 in Montreal.
Petsonk noted that China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and a few other countries placed reservations on that goal, “meaning they disagree with it, but they let the text go forward.”
“It is extremely politically contentious,” said Jean Leston, the U.K. transport policy manager for the World Wildlife Fund, who called the deal “the tiniest of tiny steps.”
“We still have no agreement on a global mechanism, which was supposed to be the big focus of this assembly.
“All kinds of countries can file all kinds of objections ... and in three years, a decision is not assured.”