Sustainable Tourism Law

668 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW biofuels have been well-demonstrated, the integrated thinking is now required to accompany their large-scale deployment. But the realization of this potential tomorrow is highly dependent on the policies that are put in place today. ICAO continues to be at the forefront in facilitating the timely availability of such fuels in sufficient quantities for use in aviation in a sustainable manner, supporting States and stakeholders in their efforts. 5 V. GLOBAL MARKET-BASED MEASURE (MBM) SCHEME Market-based-measures have been on the ICAO agenda for a number of years as a potential means to mitigate climate change impact of international aviation. Market-based measures refer to policy tools as well as market and economic instruments. They include: emissions trading, emission-related levies – charges and taxes, and emissions offsetting; all of which aim to contribute to the achievement of specific environmental goals, at a lower cost, and in a more flexible manner, than traditional command and control regulatory measures. ICAO has a long history dealing with economic instruments such as taxes and charges related to international aviation operations. Other market-based measures (MBM), however, have only recently become available options, and are now being considered by the international aviation sector. Governments and airline operators have started to explore emissions trading and various offsetting schemes as part of their efforts to limit the impact of aviation on the global climate. Emissions trading scheme for international aviation can be a cost effective measure to reduce CO2 emissions. The largest emission trading scheme in the world was the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) that decided to include aviation under its scheme from 1 January 2012. In April 2013 a decision was made to suspend the application of the EU-ETS to international aviation (referred to as “stop the clock”) so that all international flights would be excluded from the EU-ETS, and only intra-European flights remained covered in order to facilitate the discussions and support the progress made at ICAO on the development of a global market- based mechanism. 5 More information on ICAO’ s work on Sustainable aviation fuels is available at https://www.icao.int/ environmental-protection/GFAAF/Pages/default.aspx.