Oh no, ICAO!

While countries are discussing how to implement the Paris climate deal to avert the worst impacts of climate change, the UN aviation body, ICAO, is having their own conversation on climate. The 36 members of ICAO’s Council have preferred to do it in private so they can make their own rules on their carbon market and alternative fuel sustainability criteria without too much fuss.

Who wants to complicate discussions, anyway? When it comes to carbon offsets and biofuels, the aviation industry must be deciding it’s easier to just accept them all and deal with the environmental and social consequences later.

Us folks in the UNFCCC are pretty impressed with the speed at which ICAO is checking off rules for their climate measures. We’re going to have to figure out how to adapt when airlines start buying offsets and biofuels from countries with Paris pledges. Parties are counting all their emissions reductions towards their climate targets. If airlines are claiming those same reductions for themselves then two targets are claiming one emission reduction. Doesn’t that invalidate one of the targets? We haven’t come up with any rules for dealing with that here yet…slow down ICAO you’re making us look bad!

It’s really too bad we can’t see what’s going on in ICAO’s climate discussions right now, we heard they end on the same day as the COP. I’m sure there are plenty of issues that relate to what we’re working on here: Markets, accounting, land use and food security discussions. This fossil is for the 36 ICAO Council countries that won’t show us their homework on the offsets and biofuels they plan to use. Perhaps they’re worried they might get a failing grade. 

About CAN: The Climate Action Network (CAN) is a worldwide network of over 1100 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in more than 120 working to promote government and individual action to limit human induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. www.climatenetwork.org 

About the Fossils: The Fossil of the Day awards were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum. During United Nations climate change negotiations (www.unfccc.int), members of the Climate Action Network (CAN), vote for countries judged to have done their 'best' to block progress in the negotiations or in the implementation of the Paris Agreement.