The Contracting States of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency created to support diplomacy and cooperation in air transport, began discussions last night and will be considering two topics. The first regarding prevention of the spread of communicable disease through international travel, and the second regarding sustainable development. Prior to convening, representatives prepared position papers briefly explaining their positions and what they hope to achieve within the topics.

Contracting States have a variety of positions on the topic of the protection of the health of passengers and crews and prevention of communicable disease through international travel, some pushing for action and others not seeing the need for it now that the number of deaths from COVID-19 isn’t as high as it was during the peak of the pandemic. Representative Jared Aldrich of Madagascar noted the significant impact that COVID-19 had on tourism revenue and the State’s interest in resource sharing and communication in order to prevent or mitigate the effects of such a crisis in the future. Many of the other Contracting States have invested their resources toward mitigating the effects of COVID-19 or had to shut down airports/international travel completely, and affected States are eager to take any measures necessary to prevent a similar situation from repeating. Representative Josh Froidl of the Philippines stated that they would like to see the creation of processes to effectively manage the review of design for aircrafts, particularly regarding safety and waste management, leaving procedures for disease prevention up to individual States to decide. Additionally, the Representative of Iraq noted the particular toll that the pandemic had on developing countries and suggested alteration to the current plan of action in order to accommodate regional needs and further disease prevention. 

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a 15 year plan designed to accomplish a set of 17 Goals which were adopted back in 2015 by all Member States. The second topic, Aviation’s contribution towards the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is meant to examine how aviation specifically is working towards those goals and what strategies it will use to that end going forward. In statements leading up to this conference the Representative of Pakistan highlights the role that increased air traffic could play for the development of developing countries and, “urges developed countries to implement significantly more emission reductions within their State’s aviation infrastructure to relieve the financial strain these emissions reductions impact developing countries.” Several representatives expressed their interest in the development of technology to reduce the carbon output from aviation as well as the use of carbon offset measures to make up for the carbon emissions from aviation. The delegations started off on a positive note, multiple used their time for floor speeches expressing their eagerness to work together to get things accomplished.