www.icao.int
HQ: Montreal, Canada
Focal Point: Erlina Ang
Mission
A specialized agency of the United Nations, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was set up in 1944 to promote safe and orderly development of international civil aviation worldwide. It sets standards and regulations for aviation safety, security, efficiency and regularity, and for aviation environmental protection. The Organization serves as the forum for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its 193 Contracting States.
Emission Reduction
ICAO serves as a multilateral platform for cooperation on international aviation environmental protection. Over the years, the national governments who participate together under the Chicago Convention, also commonly referred to as ‘ICAO Member States’, have agreed to concentrate their aviation environmental collaboration on three core areas:
Countries are pursuing these objectives through ICAO primarily via their development of new global aviation standards. They have also agreed to aspirational goals for international aviation, and have prioritized ICAO’s Environmental Protection resources on:
- Airframe, propulsion, and other aeronautical and technological innovations
- Optimizing flight procedures to reduce fuel burn
- Increasing the production and deployment of sustainable aviation fuels and clean energy
- Implementing the Carbon Offsetting Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).
Resolutions on Environmental Protection from the 42nd Session of the ICAO Assembly
- Resolution A42-20: Consolidated statement of continuing ICAO policies and practices related to environmental protection - General provisions, noise and local air quality
- Resolution A42-21: Consolidated statement of continuing ICAO policies and practices related to environmental protection - Climate change
- Resolution A42-22: Consolidated statement of continuing ICAO policies and practices related to environmental protection - Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA)
EMS and Reduction Efforts
ICAO has implemented a series of environmentally friendly measures and practices such as conducting paperless meetings, using audio, video, and web-meeting services when practical, and many other initiatives aimed to reduce our energy consumption. ICAO’s headquarters in Montreal was the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold-certified building in Canada.
The ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator (ICEC) is the official tool for UN entities to quantify their air travel CO2 footprint, in support of their environmental commitments. The use of a common, transparent, impartial, and internationally approved methodology across the UN system facilitates the aggregation of air travel emissions data from different organizations and guarantees integrity and consistency of reported inventories. In 2025, the ICEC was updated to provide supplementary data including those to understand how the air travel emissions are related to the ICAO CORSIA. The CORSIA was adopted by the ICAO Assembly in 2016 as the global market-based measure applying to CO2 emissions from international aviation. For additional information on the ICEC, please visit https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/environmental-tools/icec.
Each year, as part of the Greening the Blue Report on Environmental Governance, each participating UN entity’s progress on the development of an Environmental Management System (EMS) is evaluated according to the UN system’s EMS criteria (these criteria are available on the Methodology webpage). Upon this evaluation the entity is then rated Exceeds, Meets, Approaches, or No response. For the 2024 reporting year, ICAO’s progress on the EMS is rated as: No response.
Environmental Training for Personnel
For the 2024 reporting year, ICAO’s status on providing training on environmental sustainability is: No response.
Offsetting
ICAO will consider any offset measures in the light of further discussions and decisions at UN level in this area.