We all remember how seriously aviation had been preparing for the UN environmental conference held earlier this month in Copenhagen. Led by IATA, the aviation industry arrived with concrete proposals and plans which were seen by several non-aviation experts as templates suitable also for other industries.
Once the conference kicked off, aviation experts must have felt like adults thrown into a kindergarten with a very poor teacher at the helm. Kids shouting all over the place, getting into fights, leaving the playroom when not granted their favorite toys… Those who ventured outside to escape the worst of the circus fared no better. There was another kind of kindergarten out there, albeit with destruction and tear-gas thrown in to increase the fun.
Of course the kids inside were the same politicians who are convinced that electric cars charged from a public utility produce virtually no emissions and also who had promised to shutter nuclear reactors while having no idea how to replace their generating capacity. It was no surprise to see them come together after having brandished the environmental flag at home and then fail to agree on the time of day, let alone actual environmental action.
There was little progress in the talks generally and hence sectoral issues like aviation were seen as too difficult to handle and they ended up in the to-do box without anybody having been appointed to do anything about them.
If you have seen some of those same politicians arriving home and reassuring us all that things are just fine now, consider the following list of major questions that still have no answers for them:
• No targets for emissions reductions for aviation
• No direction on whether a tax or an emissions trading scheme should form the basis of market-based emissions control
• No clarity on whether the UNFCCC would leave responsibility for implementing any emissions agreement that might emerge in the future to an industry body like ICAO
• No resolution for reconciling the Kyoto Protocol principle of differentiating climate responsibilities according to parties’ economic capacity with aviation’s equity principle
With all these issues left unanswered, what exactly have they come up with and what good is that to anybody?
One of the most important requirements of aviation had been to ensure a global agreement on regulating the industry’s emissions
and that this should be under the ICAO banner. The EU has already said that they will regulate emissions in aviation as they see fit if no global agreement is forthcoming. The Copenflop meeting has shown how little chance there is for a global agreement. Who could blame the EU for considering this as clearing the way for slapping the industry with its own regulation?
Aviation is a global business and regional actions have caused it tremendous pain in the past. Regional regulations in the environmental context raise the same specter once again.
A tangible outcome of Copenflop is the Copenhagen Accord, struck by the US and China plus a small group of major emitters. With the sectoral issues, like aviation, remaining wide open plus no mention of how the world will move forward on climate action, this wonderful document lacks guidance also on where decisions on aviation’s issues will have to be made.
There is another show scheduled for Bonn in May 2010. However, with aviation’s issue not touched in Copenflop, there is little hope for early progress and the end of 2010 or beyond is the only realistic expectation the industry may have for things to start moving. Of course, by then any number of regional arrangements may start to affect the picture, making the outcome on the global scene even more uncertain.
When asked whether Copenhagen was a complete waste of time for aviation, a recognized European expert gave a chilling, if revealing, answer: no, it was not. Aviation was able to achieve a profile which they never had before.
The sad thing is, he is right.
