ICAO Council President Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu delivers the keynote address to ICAO’s 191 Member States, which gathered at the UN agency’s Montreal Headquarters this week to continue their negotiations on a global Market-based Measure (MBM) for international flight emissions. The final MBM Resolution will be adopted by the ICAO Council at its upcoming 208th Session, and then voted on by all 191 Member States at ICAO’s 39th Assembly this autumn. Since 2010, nations have been cooperating intensively through ICAO on a wide range of environmental protection initiatives, including this first international MBM to mitigate CO2 emissions due to international flights.
MONTRÉAL, 11 May 2016 – Climate change and climate action were on the minds of the hundreds of State officials who gathered at the Montréal Headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) today, where they continued their cooperative and intensive negotiations aimed at finalizing a proposal for a global Market-based Measure (MBM) design suitable for international flight emissions.
“As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed during his visit to ICAO earlier this year, the peoples of the world are now looking to our Member States for environmental action post-COP/21,” remarked ICAO Council President Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu during his opening address. “The international civil aviation community has relied on its historic strengths, cooperation and consensus, to reach the point where we are today, and we will need to preserve our highest respect for those values in order to deliver a practical and agreeable MBM Resolution to our 39th Assembly this September.”
In 2013, at the last (38th) ICAO Assembly, world States agreed on a landmark Resolution to further address climate impacts from international aviation. It included an aspirational fuel efficiency improvement target of two per cent per year, a medium-term aspirational goal of carbon-neutral growth from 2020, and a further commitment to explore longer-term environmental protection goals. Decision on the design aspects of a global MBM for aviation was targeted for this September, at ICAO’s important 39th Assembly, with implementation agreed by 2020.
Canada’s Minister of Transport, The Honourable Marc Garneau, was also on hand to welcome the government dignitaries to Montréal, and to help set the stage for their discussions.
“We need to work towards an outcome that will accommodate our differences sufficiently without being discriminatory,” he stressed, “and we need to work towards an outcome that will demonstrate real emission reductions, including through robust data monitoring, verification and reporting. Accomplishing this would be an enormous step forward and is essential for a successful 39th ICAO Assembly this fall.”
This week’s meeting continues the intensive series of discussions and global outreach events undertaken through ICAO to forge global consensus around a design proposal for an aviation MBM.
If agreed to at the 39th ICAO Assembly this fall, the new economic emissions mitigation tool would be the first for any major global industrialized sector – significantly complementing the progress and momentum initiated by the Paris Agreement last December.
Resources for editors:
ICAO’s Environmental Protection website
FAQs on aviation MBM
ICAO and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Contact:
Anthony Philbin William Raillant-Clark
Chief, Communications Communications Officer
aphilbin@icao.int wraillantclark@icao.int
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