Executive Summary
Agreed in October 2016 by 191 countries in the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA)1 is the world’s first global market-based climate measure for a sector.
While agreement to establish CORSIA was an important development, ICSA believes that it is only one component of the action needed to make international aviation compliant with the objectives of the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 by the 197 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.2 It is not only important that CORSIA operates effectively to achieve its intended goals but also that the overall ambition of CORSIA is ratcheted up beyond its stated aspirational goal of stabilizing international civil aviation emissions at 2020 levels. To ensure emission reductions are consistent with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals, there must be government
action taken on a State and regional level beyond what ICAO can deliver.
On December 5, 2017, the ICAO Secretary General distributed to all ICAO Member States the draft First Edition of Annex 16, Volume IV, concerning Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) to implement CORSIA.3 The so-called “CORSIA Package” represents the culmination of four years of technical work to establish (1) processes to translate CORSIA’s emissions coverage through state pairs; (2) emissions monitoring, reporting, and verification procedures; (3) emissions unit quality criteria; (4) sustainable aviation fuels provisions; and (5) procedures for aeroplane operators to register and report their use of emissions units and aviation alternative fuels to ensure that compliance is transparent and there is no double counting.
