The Sustainability of Air Transportation

A Quantitative Analysis and Assessment

Milan Janic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351881388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Aviation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book presents, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the sustainability of the contemporary civil air transport system, examining its three main components: airports, air traffic control, and airlines. It offers an in-depth examination and quantitative insight into the system's current and prospective structure and operations, as well as the related effects and impacts. The sustainability of the air transport system is considered along a global trajectory of growing effects and diminishing and/or stagnating impacts on society and environment under conditions of continuous growth. In doing so, the author examines the situations of users of the system (passengers and freight shippers), air transport operators (airports, air traffic control and airlines), aerospace manufacturers, local and national communities, policymakers and the general public. The book possesses the unique and distinctive feature of providing an analysis and assessment of the air transport system's sustainability through elaboration of its technical/technological, operational, economic, social, environmental and institutional performances and their causality. It is written for advanced graduate and post-graduate students, researchers, planners, stakeholders, and policymakers dealing with the various sustainability issues of the contemporary air transport system.

Chapter 1
The Science and Policy of Sustainability

1.1 Background

The current production and consumption systems across the world have different impacts on the natural systems that sustain life on Earth. Mankind is a part of such constantly evolving systems. The science dealing with the systems sustaining life is ecology, which investigates ecosystems whose basic parts are plants and organisms mostly formed of water and organic materials. These ecosystems permanently change trying to survive using their reproductive and survival strategies. Except in specific situations, the human population is not considered a part of these ecosystems frequently called the life-sustaining systems. Nevertheless, it also fights for survival in the same way as ecosystems by adapting to natural and self-induced impacts appropriately. Under such circumstances, there might be some interrelations between the people-made and natural causes of impacts on particular ecosystems, which have frequently been referred to as environmental problems.

In general, people have changed their natural environment and consequently affected the life sustaining systems by almost all their activities. Historically, there are four categories of environmental problems that have been identified:

• in the life sustaining systems threatening to people’s health;
• in the life sustaining systems threatening the cultivation of spices;
• in human society affecting the economic benefits obtained from natural processes; and
• In the life sustaining systems and human society affecting the benefits obtained from natural processes of future generations and/or developing nations.

The first category of impacts refers to contamination of the environment by manmade waste, excessive emissions of air pollutants from the industrial processes and noise (all usually with a strong postponing effect).

The second category of impacts originates from the attitude that Nature has an intrinsic value, which has to be saved at any price. At a global scale this attitude appears to be in conflict with the accelerating industrial development of particularly the 20th and the beginning of twenty-first century.

The third category of impacts relates to the growth of the industrial society through the over-exploitation of nature. In other words, natural resources to support such growth have become scarcer at both a local and global scale. In many cases it seems that the speed and intensity of harvesting these still-available resources has been higher than the speed and intensity of their natural recovery, which in turn has caused their depletion and irreversible damage. Under such circumstances, the need to control the harvesting processes has emerged.

The last category of impacts relates to the rights to use the natural (constrained) resources. In other words, as the amount of these resources is limited and generally decreasing, the question is whose right is it to use them? For example, is it right to leave future generations without crude oil? Will they need some quantities or at least an adequate alternative? Are today’s generations obliged to provide such adequate alternatives? Or, is it justified that currently 20 per cent of the world’s population uses about 80 per cent of the world’s resources?

The above-mentioned impacts materialised in different forms and were recognised relatively early, at the end of nineteenth century, but have become particularly relevant during the last two decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Consequently, the concepts of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainable society’ have been promoted both at the national and international (global) level.

1.2 The Concept of Sustainable Development

The social-economic development of the twentieth century showed that a liberal conventional (capitalist) economy, as a counterpart to the central planning economy, has seemingly been unable to provide sustainable development for the human population. Pure economic growth as an exclusive objective of the overall social-economic development has not, until recently, appropriately considered the side effects in terms of environmental, intergenerational and livability effects. Most businesses have not been held accountable for the costs of damages made to the society and environment, and eventually their restoration (Griethuysen, 2002; Mikesell, 1992). The damages and restoration costs mainly included those of noise and air pollution. In general, the approach aiming to prove these statements uses the following equation to quantify the environmental degradation caused by economic development (Hooper and Gibbs, 1995):

TED = P* PCI * ED (1.1)

where

• TED is the total environmental degradation (billion $US);
• P is the population (number of people);
• PCI is the Gross National Product (GNP) per capita ($US per inhabitant); and
• ED is the environmental degradation per unit of GNP ($US per $US/ inhabitant).

According to Equation 1.1, for example, if the population doubles, the environmental degradation per unit of GNP per capita will have to half in order to keep the overall degradation at the current level. Similarly, if GNP per capita increases at an average annual rate of about 2.5−5 per cent, the required reduction of the environmental degradation would have to be by about 5−10 times, respectively. Nevertheless, this ‘one-sided’ equation has a limited value since it does not explicitly reflect a balance between the environmental degradation and other social and economic benefits to be obtained by the economic development.

Efforts to improve this rather rough and simplistic approach have resulted in the launching of the concept of ‘sustainable development’ (Kelly, 1998). Generally, this concept is defined as the ‘development that meets the present needs without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs’. This embraces: ‘i) prioritizing particular needs, and ii) respecting limitations of the environment to meet the present and future societal needs’ or ‘maximization of welfare and provision of a sound, economic, social and environmental base for both present and future generations’ (Brundtland, 1987; OECD, 1998). Daly (1991) identified three requirements for sustainable development as follows: i) the rates of use of renewable resources should not exceed the rates of their regeneration; ii) the rates of use of non-renewable resources should not exceed the rates of development of their substitutes; and iii) the rates of pollution emission should not exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment. Particularly, Gale and Gordray (1994) set up four questions for sustainable development, bearing in mind the differences between people, their culture, habits, and the specific objectives as follows: ‘What is sustained? What sustains it? How is sustainability measured? What are the policies?’ In addition, the concept is related to individual entities as the ‘capacity of the entity enabling its continuation in the future’ (Ekins, 1996), the ‘maintenance of the natural resource base including the waste absorptive capacity of the environment …’ (Mikesell, 1992) and/or the ‘valuation of the environment including the time horizon for decision making and issues of equity’ (Pearce, Markandya and Barbier, 1989).

Generally, the above-mentioned statements imply that long-term sustainable development, in addition to the positive overall socio-economic effects, should always take into account the constraints of the non-renewable resources and absorptive capacity of the environment for different types of impacts. In such a context, the sustainable entity is usually assumed to possess at least three − social, economic and environmental − dimensions. The economic dimension refers to the conventional economy and services, which increase the living standards of individuals and groups beyond the monetary income (‘man-made capital’). The social dimension relates to the people’s intra-personnel qualities such as skills and experiences (‘human capital’). The environmental dimension considers the sum of all bio-geological processes and their associated elements (‘environmental capital’) (Spangenberg, 2002). However, the essence of the above-mentioned dimensions appears to be very specific to the systems with solid technical/technological and operational dimension such as transport system.

1.3 The Sustainability of the Transport System

Transport systems have always played an important role for people and society. On the one hand it has provided clear socio-economic benefits. On the other it has generated a series of socially and environmentally adverse effects. For some time the transport system has been considered as the main source of the man-made emissions of air pollutants, particularly of carbon dioxide − CO₂. For example, in the EU (European Union) like in other regions of the world, the transport system has permanently increased its share in the total man-made emissions of CO₂, from about 21 per cent in the year 1990 to about 26 per cent in the year 2002 (EC, 2005). The total emission of CO₂ from all man-made polluting sources such as power and heat generation, industry, transport, households, and services had been 3,775 million tons in the year 1990 and 3,750 tons in the year 2002. Figure 1.1 shows changes during the observed period.

Figure 1.1 Emissions of CO₂ in the EU (25 Member States) Compiled from EC (2005)

As can be seen, while the total man-made emissions in CO₂ equivalents have been kept almost continuously below or around the 1990 level, emissions from the transport system have continuously increased, faster during the earlier and slower during the later part of the observed period. In the total amounts, the road transport is responsible for about 85 per cent. Therefore, the substantive research, policy and practical efforts, not only in the European Union (EU) but also in other parts of the Developed World, at the different geographical and institutional scales, have been undertaken aiming at appropriately balancing these and other effects in the long-term. Consequently, the concept of the sustainability of the transport system has been created (OECD, 2000, 2002).

As always when dealing with an innovative concept, understanding of particular terms and the definition has appeared to be of the greatest importance. Nevertheless, at present, a universally accepted definition of the sustainable transport system does not exist. Some definitions used for different purposes by both the academic community and practitioners are as follows (Litman, 2003):

Sustainable transportation is that, which does not endanger public health or ecosystems and that meets needs for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 The Science and Policy of Sustainability
• Chapter 2 Performances of the Air Transport System
• Chapter 3 The Sustainability of the Air Transport System
• Chapter 4 Modelling Sustainability of the Air Transport System
• Chapter 5 Epilogue
• Index