International Aviation Emissions and Climate Change

This research aims to examine climate change in relation to aviation emissions and the role of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) as the current international legal framework for the aviation industry globally.It critically analyses whether the current position taken by ICAO is indeed satisfactory in attempts to address global climate change from the aviation sector.Although there is some uncertainty, studies have shown that overall, the aviation sector contributes only 2% annually to global CO2 emissions. As such there may be no need to focus on the aviation sector as it contributes only minimally to global climate change compared to other sectors such as energy, production and manufacturing industries. However, aviation's contribution to climate change could be particularly damaging, as these emissions are released high in the atmosphere, compared to other sources of emissions which are released at ground level.The work argues that ICAO alone cannot effectively address global emissions from the aviation sector successfully,and as such more efforts should be galvanized at international, regional and national levels to combat climate change from aviation industry.