T&T is among 16 coun­tries that have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to vol­un­tar­i­ly par­tic­i­pate in the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s (ICAO), Car­bon Off­set­ting and Re­duc­tion Scheme for In­ter­na­tion­al Avi­a­tion (COR­SIA), ICAO sec­re­tary gen­er­al Dr Fang Liu has stat­ed.

This brings the to­tal num­ber of par­tic­i­pat­ing states to 104 “adding sig­nif­i­cant mo­men­tum in sup­port of ICAO’s cli­mate work.”

The 16 States are: Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Cook Is­lands, Gam­bia, Grena­da, Kiri­bati, Nau­ru, Oman, Saint Kitts and Nevis, South Su­dan, Suri­name, Ton­ga, T&T, Tu­valu, and Van­u­atu.

“COR­SIA is an im­por­tant el­e­ment to com­ple­ment the bas­ket of mea­sures that ICAO is pro­mot­ing to re­duce the cli­mate im­pact of fly­ing. The oth­er mea­sures be­ing un­der­tak­en in­clude tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion, op­er­a­tional im­prove­ment, and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fu­els,” ICAO stat­ed.

“While the COR­SIA im­ple­men­ta­tion of CO2 mon­i­tor­ing, re­port­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion has been ful­ly on-track, more par­tic­i­pat­ing States will bring ICAO States clos­er to meet­ing the glob­al as­pi­ra­tional goal of car­bon neu­tral growth for in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion. This goal was agreed through ICAO,” it stat­ed.

“I high­ly wel­come the an­nounce­ments and en­gage­ment of more States to vol­un­teer to join COR­SIA. The in­creas­ing num­ber of ICAO Mem­ber States’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in COR­SIA sends a strong sig­nal in terms of ICAO’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to ad­dress­ing CO2 emis­sions from in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion, as re­cent­ly em­pha­sised by the coun­cil. This time­ly lead­er­ship will help to build the strong mo­men­tum for glob­al cli­mate ac­tion, in the lead up to­ward the next ICAO as­sem­bly and be­yond,” stat­ed ICAO coun­cil pres­i­dent Sal­va­tore Sci­ac­chi­tano.

Liu em­pha­sised that “the ICAO as­sis­tance, ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing and train­ing for COR­SIA (ACT-COR­SIA) pro­gramme has al­so been well in place, bring­ing States and avi­a­tion in­dus­try to part­ner to­geth­er for the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of COR­SIA.

“In the best spir­it of ICAO’s no coun­try left be­hind ini­tia­tive, ICAO will con­tin­ue its ef­forts to sup­port States and en­cour­age more to join COR­SIA.”

In the spir­it of 2021 as the “make it or break it” year for glob­al cli­mate ac­tion to build the strong mo­men­tum, ICAO deputy di­rec­tor en­vi­ron­ment Jane Hupe added that “Join­ing COR­SIA is a sign from Mem­ber States of com­mit­ment to cli­mate ac­tion in avi­a­tion through ICAO. We stand ful­ly be­hind those States in re­spond­ing to the cli­mate change chal­lenge, fa­cil­i­tat­ing con­crete ac­tions.”