The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has set a goal of capping emissions from international aviation beginning in 2020, while gradually improving fuel efficiency.
The UN agency approved the “aspirational” goal, which is not binding on any of its 190 members, in a final resolution late on Friday of a meeting of its general assembly in Montreal.
The organization also unanimously supported a comprehensive aviation security strategy that calls for identifying and preventing new forms of attacks, streamlined security checks and helping states -improve capabilities in this area.
US President Barack Obama issued a statement on Saturday praising the security declaration as “a historic new foundation for aviation security that will better protect our world from evolving terrorist threats.”
On the environmental side, ICAO reaffirmed a goal of improving fuel efficiency by an average 2 percent a year through 2050.
It also said its members agreed to “work together to strive to achieve a collective medium term global aspirational goal of keeping the global net carbon emissions from international aviation from 2020 at the same level.”
The goal was not binding on any individual state and the resolution included a host of caveats such as the “special circumstances” of developing countries, the maturity of aviation markets and sustainable growth of the industry.
In a press release, the ICAO acknowledged that some member states expressed reservations about the resolution, but said its passage nevertheless made ICAO the first UN agency to lead a sector in “a globally harmonized agreement for addressing its CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions.”
“It is a major achievement,” Helen Kearns, spokeswoman for the European Commissioner for Transportation Siim Kallas, said in Brussels. “Contracting states will have to submit to ICAO how they intend to reach their target.”
“Second, it does not prevent anybody to go further and faster and acknowledges certain parties would do so,” she said, adding that the “EU can go ahead.”
Kearns said the resolution endorses a European plan for imposing a carbon emissions tax starting in 2012 on flights destined for or originating in Europe, which has drawn legal challenges from US airlines.
The International Air Transport Association also hailed the resolution as “historic.”
“For the first time, we have globally agreed aspirational goals to stabilize emissions,” ICAO director general Giovanni Bisignani said. “This is a good first step that prepares the way for future achievements.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS