As ICAO meets to discuss aviation and global warming next week, what hopes are there for finding a solution to disputes over carbon trading?
The phrase "wheels within wheels" is generally understood to mean something that is not easily understood that there is more to a situation than may at first appear. It can also take on more sinister connotations, that there are ulterior motives behind seemingly innocuous actions - all part of a larger and less obvious plan.
That fairly sums up the diplomatic undercurrents at play as the world's aviation industry prepares next week to converge on 999, rue University, Montréal, headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
Ultimately, the 189 signatory members of the UN agency will over the 10-day period attempt to thrash out exactly what market-based measures to apply in an effort to harness aviation's contribution to global warming.
The tri-annual assembly of the sovereign rulemaking body for world aviation will pore over the work of ICAO's Committee on Aviation and Environment Protection which met in February to present its thinking on emissions trading schemes.
After assessing all the latest scientific and technical thinking, CAEP recommended that such reciprocal trading agreements were best implemented solely on the basis of consent between member states.
That emphasis on mutual sanction, however, runs counter to Europe's radical blueprint to include from 2012 all international flights in what is the world's largest carbon market, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme - basically, a move to make foreign airlines flying into Europe pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.
The USA has however made it patently and consistently clear that it will hit back with trade sanctions if the EU attempts this and reiterated its opposition very publicly at an ICAO environment meeting in Montreal in May.
The US Federal Aviation Administration has high hopes that the ICAO General Assembly will support its campaign to strike down the EU's version of an emissions trading scheme. Carl Burleson, FAA director of the office of environment and energy, stresses that it is not opposed to emissions trading, per se. Indeed, Burleson credits the US government for inventing the cap-and-trade concept as an environmental policy in areas other than aviation.
As they see fit
The FAA, Burleson says, favours ICAO's proposed guidance that allows its members to achieve targets for reducing aviation's impact on climate change as they see fit. By this reasoning, the FAA and its allies in the assembly say they may support participating in an emissions trading system if given a chance to be a part of developing its terms. Why? Because the US approach may be very different than the EU's because its aviation systems have widely varying traffic patterns.
Martin Capstick is the green mandarin heading the UK Department for Transport's aviation environmental division - a keen supporter of the EU emissions trading regime. "We are hoping for a harmonious outcome which provides for a comprehensive set of actions to address aviation's impact on climate change," he says with peerless inscrutability.
Tim Johnson at the Aviation Environment Federation and who attends ICAO in his capacity as non-governmental organisation representative can afford to be less enigmatic.
"ICAO doesn't really do surprises but if there was ever a time for surprises it would be now. They've had 10 years to come up with something and as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change prepares for a post-Kyoto world beyond 2012 it will be a case of one UN agency saying to another, 'well, what have you done?'"
He's right. A UNFCCC meeting at Bali, Indonesia scheduled for December will attempt to map out a new round of cuts in carbon dioxide emissions when Kyoto runs out in 2012, with observers reckoning that the next new treaty will need to be completed by 2010 at the very latest to enable all signatories to ratify in time.
Range of opinion
Within the Kyoto stakeholder community there is a whole spectrum of opinion, ranging from the radical European whose legislators want the industrialised world to set ambitious, unambiguous targets, through fast-growing developing economies such as China and India that preciously guard their right to continuing industrial elevation, to, finally the USA, leading an unwavering resistance to Kyoto.
Regional interests aside, what is becoming increasingly important for global aviation is how it should go about charting an essentially sectoral approach.
As ICAO is not due to hold its next General Assembly until 2010, the UN agency representing the interests of global aviation must well fear that it risks losing its pre-eminent sector development role in greenhouse gas reduction. "To maintain its leading role in reducing greenhouse gases, ICAO is going to have to say something very positive to the UNFCCC," says Johnson.
What is currently on the table fails however to send many environmental NGOs into raptures, however. "Even if there is agreement on CAEP guidance later this month, that will only extend to individual states which want to take action. That's still a long way short from a global response," says Johnson.
Starting to talk
That leads him to think that any "surprise" will have to be something over and above what is currently on offer and Johnson suspects it will contain all the necessary elements enabling the global aviation community to "end up starting to talk as a sector about how greenhouse gases can be reduced".
One unconfirmed rumour which supports Johnson's idea of a surprise being potentially in the offing relates to the fact that the ICAO Council is understood to be meeting simultaneously alongside the General Assembly - unprecedented in itself - and allowing it to, as one observer said "throw something in the pot".
"Pressure in the climate change world is creating a sense of opportunity so it fast becomes an issue of, will the ICAO Council seize that opportunity?" says Johnson.
The world will likely know in which direction global aviation will go in terms of emissions trading on 26 September after five days' of discussion involving the requisite interludes more redolent of the horse trade than a international parlay among nation states.
That date too could assume more significance with two meetings in September set to deeply influence the Kyoto process. One will be held in New York, where the UN Secretary-General will host a meeting of 30 major countries on 24 September, to be following by another General Assembly session dedicated to climate change. The other follows on 27 and 28 September in Washington, when the US Secretary of State will chair a meeting of 16 countries that together account for some 90% of global emissions.
While green groups fear that the USA continues to want to subvert the mandatory Kyoto methods and replace it with a voluntary, technology-driven approach, global aviation and its privileged sheltered status looks set to become an institutional microcosm highlighting all the acute pressures at play in the next chapter in the Kyoto narrative.
Source: Flight International
