Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
has focused upon impacts from new and expanded airports, with much less concern
being expressed about aviation's overall environmental consequences. In sustainabil-
ity terms, the EU looks to a transport strategy, which reconciles a curb on mobility
with competing demands for accessibility related to competitive efficiency, geograph-
ical location and social equity for all of its citizens.
Even at this most cursory level of analysis, it is apparent that a complex mesh of ten-
sions and contradictions is produced by the relationships between air transport glo-
balization, liberalization and sustainability. Policies and strategies that might curb or
diminish the environmental externalities of air transport are likely to be swamped by
those promoting its development. Although air transport is almost entirely a derived
demand, one result of liberalization and privatization is that its provision is increas-
ingly dominated by the interests of private companies, particularly the airlines. Their
market strategies may impact directly and negatively on sustainability and its achieve-
ment. These tactics strive to achieve precisely the opposite effect to the curbs on move-
ment inevitably intrinsic to sustainability. They are aimed, instead, at enhancing air
transport demand and increasing volumes of traffic. Airlines as businesses in the glo-
balizing, liberalized market place have no rational alternative but to cater to existing
demand in ways that are most profitable, while fostering future demand. In that conun-
drum lies the principal dilemma compromising the entire idea of sustainable aviation.
A
IRCRAFT
NOISE
:
THE
NGO
PERSPECTIVE
1
Tim Johnson, Aviation Environment Federation
An inadequate regulatory framework
In October 2001, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the UK
government had infringed the human rights of residents living near London's Heath-
row airport by failing to protect them adequately from night-time aircraft noise.
2
The
court decided that in setting night-time noise restrictions for Heathrow in 1993, the
government had failed 'to strike a fair balance between the UK's economic well-being'
and the applicants' right to enjoy 'their homes, their private and family lives'.
While at the time of writing the UK government has appealed, and the Grand
Chamber of the ECHR will reconsider its earlier decision, an important question to
consider is why this case went to the ECHR in the first place. Quite simply, the piece-
meal way in which aircraft noise is regulated in the UK, and in Europe, meant that it
was the only route available to residents. Ever since the 1920s, civil aviation legislation
in the UK has protected aviation from anyone wishing to take an action for nuisance
resulting from aircraft noise.
3
At the time that it was enacted, the rationale was that
aviation was a fledgling industry which needed protecting. Yet, some 80 years on,
with the industry in a relatively mature stage of development, this protection has never
been repealed. Furthermore, it has meant that aircraft noise remains exempt from
the provisions of more recent legislation such as the Environmental Protection Act.
This industry protection is, of course, not unique to the UK. The majority of coun-
tries worldwide have similar long-standing legislation, or have hastily introduced it
in recent decades. Japan, for example, was forced to introduce legislation after the
