Aviation and Environmental Protection After the 2015 Paris Agreement: From Regulatory Unilateralism Toward International Cooperation

Climate change and global warming are issues that concern the aviation sector. Over the last years, many initiatives have been undertaken at different levels of regulation: domestically, regionally and internationally. At regional level, the EU ETS is a cornerstone of the European Union’s policy to combat climate change. Nevertheless, the recent EU experience has shown that regional approaches are not adequate to meet global challenges and that the complexity of aviation carbon emissions has a global dimension and can only be solved through a global regulatory approach. At international level, important initiatives have been implemented, even recently when at the 2015 Paris climate conference, 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal. The present study aims at identifying some of the current key regulatory issues in the field of environmental protection in the aviation sector, especially after the 2015 Paris Agreement, taking into account that this Agreement does not cover the aviation sector. The silence of the 2015 Paris Agreement on aviation paves the way to vest the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) with custody over aviation emissions reductions and, therefore, to abandon unilateral regulatory options for a stronger international cooperation. Within this context, the author submits that ICAO is the natural organization to explore, put forward, and discuss global solutions.