Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
enduring and equitable climate protocol will eventually require emission quotas to
be allocated to nations on a simple and equal per capita basis' (RCEP, 2000, p56). In
this scenario, national emission quotas would follow a contraction and convergence
trajectory, with each nation's allocation gradually shifting from its current level of
emissions towards a level set on a uniform per-capita
basis (RCEP, 2000, p57). Quite
what this would mean for airlines and airports has yet to be determined. For govern-
ments committed to stabilizing anthropogenic influence on climate change, the out-
come for aviation will be particularly influenced by societal priorities for fossil fuel
use and rates of technological change.
Local participation: airports
To date, no government has yet sought to reduce the volume of air traffic for reasons
of avoiding anthropogenic influence on climate change. Rather, the emphasis has been
on managing the local impacts of rising air traffic, particularly aircraft noise and - to
a lesser extent - particular gaseous emissions. Accompanying the increase in traffic
has been commercial pressure for, and the actuality of, providing new airports and
associated infrastructure. Whether or not infrastructure or additional traffic are wel-
comed by people living near airports is likely to depend upon a range of factors, par-
ticularly the degree of local economic need for increased business activity.
In Europe, participation and consultation on expansion plans for major airport
infrastructure is already required under European Commission (EC) environmental
impact assessment law (EC, 1997). Yet development consultation can often be a cur-
sory and unsatisfactory affair for affected residents. How better to strike the balance
between commercial aviation interests, government aviation policy and local resi-
dents needs to be resolved, though some suggestions are outlined by Robert Caves in
Chapter 3. Whatever solutions are devised, satisfactory ingredients are likely to include
enforceable upper limits on environmental and operational factors and compensa-
tion for lost amenity, within a context of an explicit national policy for airport and
air traffic distribution.
C
ONCLUSION
Whether or not one considers aviation trends to be sustainable depends, of course, upon
one's definition of sustainability. The more environmentally precautious approaches
to sustainability suggest that aviation, in common with other fossil-fuelled activity,
is moving in an unsustainable direction due to absolute increases in environmental
consumption and emissions. In the short to medium term, the degree to which sus-
tainability poses a challenge for aviation will depend largely upon the ways in which
electorates and policy-makers react to the noise impacts of increasing air traffic,
remembering that this increase has historically been conditional on GDP growth.
In the longer term, increased frequency of more energetic weather events may
lead to stricter control of carbon emissions across economies. Yet this in itself may
not require an end to even kerosene-fuelled aviation growth. An internationally
equitable contract and convergence trajectory for greenhouse gases would have dif-
ferent implications for different countries, with some countries more free to expand
