Paper for Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

Full Title "Environmental capacity of aviation: theoretical issues and basic research directions" Running title "Environmental capacity of aviation" Author Dr. Paul Upham, Research Fellow, aric Publication reference Upham, P. (2001) "Environmental capacity of aviation: theoretical issues and basic research directions", Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 44 (5): 721-734. Affiliation of author Centre for Aviation, Transport and the Environment (CATE) Address of corresponding author Dr. Paul Upham aric Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences Manchester Metropolitan University John Dalton Extension Chester Street Manchester M1 5GD United Kingdom fax: +44 (0) 161 247 6332 tel: +44 (0) 161 247 3652 e-mail: p.upham@mmu.ac.uk internet: http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/aric/index.html

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ABSTRACT

The EU Transport Commission considers limited environmental capacity a potential

constraint on aviation growth. Although environmental capacity is subject to value-

laden judgements regarding environmental conservation and socio-economic

development, levels of environmental capacity consumption and availability can in

principle be determined within a distance-to-target framework. Locally negotiated

emissions levels and regulated environmental quality states can function as local

environmental capacity targets for airports. For environmental factors not already

regulated, protocols for sectoral limits for resource inputs and waste outputs need to

be researched and developed. Assessment of environmental capacity availability and

consumption should be undertaken on a life cycle basis analysis.

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INTRODUCTION

This paper sets out a theoretical basis for defining and measuring environmental

capacity in relation to aviation, together with associated conceptual literature and

directions for further research. The paper constitutes a response to recent discussion

of the concept of environmental capacity in an aviation context. The European

Commission has expressed the view that limited environmental capacity is a potential

constraint on aviation growth (Coleman, 1999). More recently, the UK Government

asked in its consultation document The Future of Aviation whether the concept of

environmental capacity limits can be applied successfully to UK airports, and how

limits would be set (DETR, 2000a). London Luton Airport in the UK has promoted

use of local environmental capacity limits in preference to passenger throughput

limits LLAO (2000), and the paper goes on to explain why this approach is a partial

and hence inadequate approach to environmental capacity definition.

European Union transport and economic policy statements increasingly refer to the

need for sustainable development, though they continue to express a commitment to

aviation growth that will inevitably entail increased environmental impact.

'Sustainable mobility' is nominally an overarching objective of the 1998-2004 Action

Programme for Transport (EC, 1998), and the European Commission considers that

an indefinite continuation of current trends in transport modes such as road and air

would be unsustainable, particularly regarding climate change (EC, 1998: 6). The

European Commission has also explicitly identified climate change as a reason to

reverse the trend of increasing environmental impact arising from aviation (EC,

1999a: 2).

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Regarding airlines, the Draft Report on the European Commission's Communication

"Air Transport and the Environment: towards meeting the challenges of sustainable

development", for the European Parliamentary Committee on Regional Policy,

Transport and Tourism recommended a 5% reduction in aircraft emissions as feasible

for industrialised nations on 1992 levels, by 2008-2012 (Lucas, 2000). In support of

this level of reduction, the Draft Report (ibid) cites a study by Brokhagen and

Lienemeyer (1999, in Lucas, 2000), that suggests the possibility of greenhouse gas

emissions reductions of 25-50% by 2020. In contrast, however, the European airline

association AEA and aerospace industry association AECMA believe that a projected

1.1 % annual fall in CO2 emissions between now and 2012 is itself "ambitious" and

assumes early aircraft replacement (AEA and AECMA, 1999).

More generally, on 9th June 1999 the European Commission adopted a Proposal for a

Directive on nationally differentiated emission ceilings for particular atmospheric

pollutants (EC 1999b). Although a weakened emissions target is likely (ENDS Daily

2000a), compliance with the original ceilings by 2010, relative to 1990 levels, would

have resulted in atmospheric emission reductions of 78% for sulphur dioxide, 55% for

nitrogen oxides, 60% for volatile organic compounds and 21% for ammonia (EC,

1999b). In the Commission's proposal, aircraft emissions are to be accounted for only

within the landing/take-off cycle (EC, 1999b).

Accounting for the various possibilities to increase fuel-efficiency across the aviation

system, the European Commission (1997: 17) believes that an environmental

agreement between itself and the air transport industry should aim at reaching an

improvement of 4% to 5% p.a. in CO2 reductions by the end of an initial period of 10-

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15 years. With the availability of new technologies from 2015, it considers that even

more ambitious goals could be envisaged for the longer-term (ibid).

Regarding airports, the EU Transport Commission has stated that "it is the

environmental capacity of airports, much more than physical or financial constraints,

which cause imbalances and impediments to growth" (Coleman, 1999). While this

raises the profile of environmental capacity as a concept, it also implies that further

aviation growth is desirable. In contrast, and in terms of controlling single forms of

aviation impact, Switzerland is to introduce a ban on night flights from international

airports between 0:00 and 05:00, and between 22:00 and 06:00 for domestic airports

(ENDS, 2000b). Zurich airport also imposes an emissions surcharge on aircraft

engines of a particular type (Zurich Airport Authority, 1999). The German

government is to cut noise levels around airports to 60-65 dB compared with current

limits of 67 and 75 dB (ENDS, 2000c).

With theoretical and practical contradictions between sustainability and economic

growth in mind - contradictions that at best reflect the position of economies in slow

transition to more sustainable states, and at worst indicate a merely rhetorical policy

commitment to sustainability - the paper sets out the theoretical issues involved in

applying the concept of environmental capacity to aviation. In terms of the balance of

the discussion, the paper is more airport than airline oriented, but the issues identified

are relevant to both. Consideration is also given to the relationship of sustainability

and environmental capacity, and a corresponding basic research agenda follows.

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AVIATION GROWTH AND ASSOCIATED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

In the last 30 years the number of passengers travelling through UK airports has

grown more than six-fold, from 22.5 million in 1966 to 146.8 million in 1997 (CAA,

1999). Airfreight traffic has grown faster than passenger traffic (ibid), and UK air

traffic is projected to grow at an average of 4.5% per annum between 1999 and 2015

(DETR, 1999). By 2015, DETR (ibid) and CAA (1999) statistics show that UK

airports could be handling some 310 million passengers, with continued year-on-year

growth. Globally, passenger air travel is projected to grow by some 5% per year

between 1990 and 2015, in terms of revenue passenger-km (IPCC, 1999).

Although contemporary aircraft are significantly less noisy and more fuel-efficient

than their equivalent predecessors (Janic, 1999), aviation growth has entailed growth

in a number of environmental impacts. While global aviation emissions of carbon

dioxide are a small percentage of anthropogenic carbon emissions world-wide, they

are now roughly equivalent to the carbon emissions of some industrialised countries

(US GAO, 2000). Global aviation emitted about 145 million metric tons of carbon in

1996 (IPCC, 1999, in US GAO, 2000). Although this is 'only' about 2.6 percent of the

world’s total anthropogenic carbon emissions, it is still roughly equivalent to the total

carbon emissions of Canada at 140 million metric tons for the same year, and the

United Kingdom’s 1996 carbon emissions at 153 million metric tons (op cit).

Moreover, for the period 1992 to 2050, the overall radiative forcing by aircraft

(excluding that from changes in cirrus clouds) is projected to be a factor of 2 to 4

times larger than the forcing by aircraft carbon dioxide alone (IPCC, 1999). In

contrast, the overall radiative forcing for the sum of all human activities is estimated

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to be at most a factor of 1.5 larger than that of carbon dioxide alone (ibid). The

difference arises from the altitude at which aircraft emissions arise and the associated

formation of cirrus clouds and contrails. In the moderate IPCC "reference" scenario

(FA1), radiative forcing by subsonic aircraft in 2050 is projected to be 3.8 times its

value in 1992 (ibid: 9). Part-substitution of sub-sonic by supersonic aircraft is

expected to increase the radiative warming contribution of aircraft by a further 42%

(ibid: 9). Since aircraft contribute to global change approximately in proportion to

their contribution to radiative forcing (ibid: 9), this means that aircraft contribution to

anthropogenic climate change is both more intense than that of average human

activity and - uncertainties notwithstanding - is likely to more than quadruple in the

next half century.

At a local level, aircraft and airport operations still generate significant levels of

noise, which can be associated with sleep disturbance, annoyance and other related

physiological and psychological effects (Morrell et al, 1997; Bullinger et al, 1999).

Noise can have a negative effect upon house prices and land use values in the vicinity

of an airport (Tomkins et al, 1998, Pennington et al 1990), and aircraft movements

can lead to house damage from vortices (Rossow, 1999) and reduce enjoyment of

nearby recreational areas (Krog and Engdahl, 1999). There is also evidence of a

historical legacy of contaminated land, ground and surface water at airports arising

from jet fuels, aircraft de-icing and anti-icing operations (Kent et al, 1999; Turnbull

and Bevan, 1995; Cancilla, 1997). Additionally, aircraft emissions to air in the

environs of the airport, and surface access air emissions, are a potential threat to the

growth of the aviation industry (Raper and Maughan, 2000).

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Regarding resource consumption, in general it is likely that global environmental

sustainability is more immediately threatened by a shortage of sink than source

capacity - that is, by the limited capacity of the global environment to process

anthropogenic wastes - rather than by its capacity to supply material resources.

Nevertheless, aircraft propulsion will remain dependent on refined fossil oil

(kerosene) for the foreseeable future (IPCC, 1999). A continuing oil supply is

therefore fundamental to aviation growth constituted with prevailing technologies. In

the UK alone, fuel consumption by aircraft during 1997 was 8.1 million tonnes

(Environmental Statistics, 1998) and will continue to grow. Assuming an ultimately

finite oil reserve and a dependence on that reserve (IPCC, ibid), kerosene availability

is a patently unsustainable feature of contemporary aviation technology.

CONCEPTUAL PARALLELS TO ENVIRONMENTAL CAPACITY

The term environmental capacity is closely related to the concepts 'carrying capacity'

and 'sustainability'. At the heart of the carrying capacity idea is the ecological notion

of a maximum number of individuals of a given species that an ecosystem can sustain,

exceedance of which will result in the population being reduced back to or below that

maximum (Kidd, 1992). A number of studies have attempted to express the concept

of carrying capacity at a global level. The late 1960's and early 1970's saw modelling

and discussion of impending limits of the Earth's carrying capacity due to industrial

and population growth (Kidd, 1992), notably a study by the Club of Rome (1972),

followed by Meadows et al (1992). At a local level, carrying capacity has been used

in applied ecology and tourism contexts (Seidl and Tisdell, 1999), where it has been

criticised as being inadequate for expressing the necessary level of complexity

(Lindberg et al, 1997, in Seidl and Tisdell, 1999: 402). Particular criticisms have

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included the imprecision of the concept and the way in which policy proponents may

be unaware of its high level of subjectivity (ibid). As Seidl and Tisdell (1999: 403)

observe, the concept only becomes operational when the desired environmental

conditions are specified, when socio-political economic and subjective components

are taken into account, and when concerned parties are involved. In other words

"Carrying capacities alter according to variations in value judgements and objectives"

(Seidl and Tisdell, 1999: 407).

Environmental capacity implicitly encompasses carrying capacity but is wider in its

range of meaning. Its focus is not so much the capacity required to sustain a

population, as the environment that sustains human activity. In application,

environmental capacity is subject to the main criticisms made of carrying capacity.

For example, often applied in the context of urban development planning, particularly

housing (e.g. Roebuck, 1994; DETR, 1997 and Jacobs, 1997), environmental capacity

has been used in many different ways to suit the user (Barton, 1995: 19). Moreover, in

a housing context, estimates of capacity have not been made in some hypothetically

objective manner, but incorporate pre-existing policies on housing densities, infill,

renewal of derelict urban land and so on (ibid). Similarly, Rydin (1998: 756) has

described the way in which environmental capacity, and the land-use planning system

more generally, risks reflecting and reinforcing prevailing political and economic

forces.

Since environmental capacity is also a very general term, Barton observes that it

needs to be supplemented by context-specific thresholds, breach of which should

draw a management response (Barton, 1995: 22). This corresponds to the approach

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used by London Luton Airport Operations (LLAO, 2000: 80), which defines

environmental capacity in an airport context as "the extent to which the environment

(and the local community) is able to receive and tolerate, assimilate, or process

outputs derived from airport activities". The next section identifies the problems

involved in trying to relate global environmental capacity to airports.

Sustainability is wider still in its meaning. Although subject to a wide range of

general and specific interpretation - see Upham (1999, 2000b) for a collation and

categorisation of sustainability principles - sustainability is generally understood as

relating to the achievement of social and economic objectives without irreversibly

damaging supportive natural systems. This begs many questions, many of which are

also raised by the concept of environmental capacity as discussed below. By way of

an example of environmental sustainability principles, the Netherlands Advisory

Council for Research on Nature and Environment have used a particular set of criteria

as part of an estimation of required, national percentage reductions in environmental

impact (Weterings and Opschoor, 1992: 9-13). The criteria are based, in turn, on the

distinction made by Udo de Haes (1984) between depletion, pollution and

encroachment:

1. General sustainability criterion for depletion:

no absolute exhaustion of renewable resources; maintain residual stocks of non-

renewables sufficient for 50 years' use.

2. General sustainability criterion for pollution:

no accumulation of pollution or lasting effects for future generations.

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3. General sustainability criterion for encroachment:

(encroachment relates to interventions that affect natural structures and systems). Loss

of acreage must not exceed the area added or restored by natural or artificial means

(Weterings and Opschoor, 1992: 9-13).

While aviation as a sector will be moving in an unsustainable direction in terms of

these particular sustainability principles, particularly as a consequence of its reliance

on hydrocarbons and land for airport expansion, its performance in the same terms

relative to other transport sectors is less clear. The picture is further complicated when

the social and economic aspects of sustainability are considered, for aviation also

generates significant employment and revenue. Although any estimate is open to

critique, for the UK economy in 1998 this has been estimated at £10.2 billion or 1.4%

of total GDP, and 180,000 direct employees or 0.8% of total employment (OEF,

1999).

As an example of a contrasting approach to sustainability, the UK Government's

sustainable development objectives are

a) social progress that recognises the needs of everyone;

b) effective environmental protection;

c) prudent use of natural resources (DETR, 1998).

These have the advantage of implicitly recognising these economic and social

benefits. They have the disadvantage, however, of defining neither 'effective' nor

'prudent', and hence being of little environmental value in themselves. The approach

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to environmental capacity proposed below is less environmentally strict than that of

Weterings and Opschoor (1992), but more environmentally specific than the general

objectives of DETR (1998).

THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CAPACITY

Operationalising environmental capacity requires decisions on a number of issues, as

summarised in question form in Figure 1. While Figure 1 and the following

discussion relates environmental capacity largely to airports, the main questions are

equally applicable to airlines.

<INSERT BOX 1>

Defining the analytic boundary

The first issue concerns definition of the environmental capacities that are considered

to be the airport's concern; in other words, it is necessary to define the boundary of

the airport's responsibility. Environmental impacts are associated with all of the

products and processes that allow the airport to function - that is, with everything that

enters the airport's gates or which is situated beyond the airport but is important for

its viability. Examples of non-local impacts associated with airports are listed in

Table 1, together with general cause, airport-specific cause and the main

biogeochemical cycle affected. Some of the causes of these impacts will also give

rise to local impacts of the same nature - for example, surface access can cause local

air quality deterioration as well as deterioration through the whole journey to the

airport.

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<INSERT TABLE 1>

When determining environmental capacity in relation to airports, the location of the

analytic boundary should be drawn differently for different purposes. If the objective

is to compare environmental consumption by alternative forms of transport, or the

availability of environmental capacity for these, then the airport should be considered

in conjunction with the wider aviation system. Accordingly, the analytic boundary

would be defined with respect to the main functional components of that system.

Life cycle analysis (LCA) is the principal environmental management tool with

protocols designed to bound and indicate impacts associated with spatially and

temporally separated technological interconnections and their impacts (ISO/TC

207/SC5, 1997). This said, even LCA studies themselves are necessarily bounded in

a manner that requires some degree of value judgement (Fava et al, 1993, p. xxvii).

Although comprehensive LCA of an airport would be infeasible, a carefully scoped

application of life cycle thinking to airport environmental assessment and capacity

indication should be possible. This would involve:

1. the use of expert judgement to pre-identify impacts that are spatially and

temporally distant from the airport, but which are necessarily consequent on the

airport's activity, given prevailing technological systems. Activities defined as

necessarily consequent are those functionally associated with the airport.

2. Quantitative indication of input resources and output wastes, reflecting the pre-

impact level at which LCA usually indicates (Barnthouse et al., 1998).

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3. In principle, the obtained indicator magnitudes would then be related to socially

determined input and output limits, to derive the 'distance' to environmental

capacity or (environmental sustainability) target. In practice, these targets

generally do not exist in a form that can be easily related to individual airports

(Upham, 2000a). Therefore, to indicate airport consumption of global

environmental capacity leaves the options of:

a) using absolute indicators of resource input and waste output, without relation to

capacity, with repeated monitoring to reveal trend directions; and/or

b) developing protocols for globally-relevant capacity limits for sectoral resource

inputs and waste outputs aimed at achieving non-critical perturbation of global

biogeochemical cycles. The only waste outputs for which this has been

consensually achieved for nations are greenhouse gas emissions.

c) Thereafter, relating these limits to the absolute consumption indicators found in

(a), in a distance-to-target manner, would give estimates of the availability of

environmental capacity.

If the objective is to compare environmental consumption and availability for which

an airport or airline can reasonably be considered responsible in a legal or ethical

sense, given prevailing environmental and business legislation, then the boundary

will be drawn more tightly. For example, aircraft air pollutant emissions should

certainly be included in a comparative environmental assessment of an aviation

system with a high-speed train system. For this purpose, the "functional unit" (the

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system objective identified for the purpose of the study, such as the carriage of one

person over a distance of one kilometre) would be held identical, as is standard in

LCA practice (Barnthouse, 1998). Aircraft emissions could also, arguably, be

included in an assessment of an airport system that is intended to be informative but

is for internal use only, or is without any legal implication. This would be

particularly the case if the aircraft emissions would not otherwise be accounted for. It

would not be reasonable, however, to assign legal or quasi-legal responsibility for

aircraft emissions to airports, as might be considered under a voluntary or statutory

commitment to emissions reduction.

Defining capacity limits

The need to account for indirect impacts when assessing the impact of aviation is

related to the second main issue of the limits that are used to define capacities,

without which the notion of capacity is meaningless. Use of limits or consents that

have been negotiated locally with environmental regulators is the most immediately

practicable option for indicating use of local environmental capacity. Examples of

these conventional types of local limit are given in Table 2, in which London Luton

Airport is used as an example for its adoption of environmental capacity as a general

environmental principle for its development planning (LLAO, 2000).

London Luton Airport is a regional airport serving London and mid, east and south

east England. It currently has a passenger throughput of 5 million passengers per

annum (mppa), anticipates the possibility of 10 mppa by 2004 (LLAO, 2000) and

with a runway extension has a theoretical, maximum capacity of 30mppa (DoT,

15

1993). It is located about 45 km north of London on a 235-hectare site close to the

Luton-Dunstable conurbation and some 8000 people are employed on the site (LLAO

2000). The airport is within the region of England for which the government is

currently consulting on an appraisal framework for assessing airport development

proposals (DETR, 2000b).

The airport considers that attempting to set planning controls for airports in

throughput terms, whether air traffic movements or passengers, provides no

encouragement for airport operators to minimise environmental impact (LLAO 2000:

73). As a rationale for its approach to local environmental capacity, London Luton

refers to the Environment Agency's use of assimilative capacity as a criterion in

setting discharge limits. This is applied under the Integrated Pollution Prevention

Control Act (1999) as a means of implementing EC Directive 96/61 (EC 1996)

(LLAO 2000: 74). It would also be fair to say that there are commercial reasons for

the airport to favour this approach to local environmental capacity as a guiding

principle. For the airport, the possibility of using mitigation to keep local impacts

constant or 'controlled' while raising passenger throughput is bound to be preferable to

an existing aspect of the regulatory regime to which it is subject. That is, a policy in

the statutory strategic development plan that permits proposals seeking to increase

passenger capacity up to 10 mppa (Bedfordshire County Council 1997, in LLAO

2000: 34).

<INSERT BOX 2>

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There are certainly disadvantages to using local regulatory limits as local

environmental capacity limits. In particular, local regulatory limits are partial in their

relationship to features of local environmental significance and are often contested,

particularly in the case of aircraft noise (Friends of the Earth Netherlands, 2000).

Biodiversity is typically protected only when species are protected under national

legislation, and this protection may take the form of species relocation rather than

area-wide protection. Moreover, regulatory limits usually relate to environmental

states and waste emissions, not to the quantities of inputs that eventually lead to

emissions and deterioration in environmental states. A notable exception in this

context is Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, which has a covenant with the Netherlands

government by which it seeks to reduce relative (per passenger or unit floor area)

energy consumption and increase use of 'sustainable' energy sources (Amsterdam

Airport Schiphol, 1998). Nevertheless, local regulatory limits have the important

advantage of legal status.

Indicating environmental capacity consumption and availability

The third issue for decision relates to the method of indicating performance relative to

the chosen capacity limit. The decisions are ones of selecting terms and units. The

ideal information scenario is one of reliably indicated causes and characteristics of

direct and main indirect impacts, from a life cycle perspective as discussed above. In

terms of the pressure-state-response framework for environmental indicators (OECD,

1998), causes are the pressuring human activity (e.g. traffic movements and

associated emissions), and consequences are changes in the environmental state (e.g.

changes in local atmospheric concentrations of pollutants or area of vegetated land).

In principle, reliable indication of environmental performance relative to the chosen

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capacity limit requires terms and measurement units correlated as closely as possible

with the terms and units of that capacity limit. For example, if a capacity limit is

formulated in terms of atmospheric parts per million of a substance at designated

monitoring points (an environmental state measure), measurement of atmospheric

capacity usage in terms of surface access vehicle numbers (an environmental pressure

measure) would be unreliable without a known and constant relationship of vehicle

numbers to air pollutant concentrations. Without a constant relationship and

knowledge of this, varying relationships of vehicles to air pollutants and their

concentration could confound reliability.

While use of identical measurement terms for capacity availability and capacity usage

is preferable, achieving reliability is complicated when distant but associated impacts

are significant and when the intention is to indicate this significance. Although a

capacity limit formulated in terms of local atmospheric concentration is best indicated

in the same terms, proxy indicators may be more reliable indicators of the total impact

associated with a pressuring activity. To continue the air quality example, both

vehicle emission quantities and vehicle numbers have some advantage over

atmospheric concentration, as indicators of the impact of surface access on non-local

air quality. Atmospheric concentration data directly reflect the quality only of the air

compartment where monitors are situated. As an indicator, emissions quantities will

be likely to indirectly indicate those parts of the emission dispersed to unmonitored

air compartments, to air compartments that are distant from the monitored and

modelled area, and those that are deposited to land and water. Vehicle counts,

particularly when differentiated by type, will be likely to indirectly and coarsely

18

indicate wider impacts such as fuel consumption, unaccounted air emissions and (less

directly) impact associated with petroleum refinery.

It is not possible to prove associations between indirect indicators and direct but

unmonitored indicators of environmental impact for which values are unknown. As in

life cycle analysis (LCA), validation in terms of site-specific measures is prevented

(Udo de Haes, 1996: 12) by limited time and data availability: in both cases, it would

require measurement of actual impacts associated with the chain of production and

hence scattered through space and time. Yet this lack of measured values invalidates

neither LCA nor other relatively indirect indicators in environmental assessment as

suggested here. Rather, it requires a good understanding of what indication actually

involves. The upshot is that multi-level indicators are required to capture spatially and

temporally dispersed aspects of related problems, and in which the levels relate to

proximity to environmental state. Multi-level sets should also reveal reliability

problems as they occur, since inconsistency in the direction of different but related

indicators should oblige closer investigation.

Basic research directions

Since actions taken to mitigate local impacts have distant impacts, economic growth

with local mitigation will at some point prejudice global environmental sustainability.

For this reason, public policy expressions of environmental capacity and the

environmental component of sustainability should make reference to absolute limits

for resource use and waste production. The social and economic components of

sustainability relate in part to the allocation or distribution (Claussen and McNeilly,

1998) of these limits and the means of their achievement. Corresponding research

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directions for sustainability and aviation policy relate to the development of protocols

for:

• limits on environmental consumption and waste, with respect to all environmental

media, for airlines and airports;

• the allocation or distribution of these limits between nations, for airlines and

airports.

This limits-oriented research is needed to complement work on policy tools (e.g.

Hewett and Foley, 2000) and technical innovation (e.g. Kempton, 2000).

Conclusion

Environmental limits are inherent to the meaning of environmental capacity, as they

are to environmental sustainability. In the same way that it makes little sense to

consider only local environmental sustainability when this is partly dependent on the

sustainability of larger systems, so must environmental capacity be considered in

relation to non-local impacts. Most of these impacts ultimately relate to global

biogeochemical cycles and should be characterised with life cycle analysis in order to

indicate those that are spatially and temporally distant from the airport or aircraft. As

with other economic sectors, protocols justifying the magnitudes of resource input and

waste output limits, and their distribution, remain to be developed. The aviation

industry needs to be involved in this research to facilitate development and acceptance

of protocols that will inevitably be politically and commercially challenging.

20

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29

Figure 1. Airport environmental capacity: summary of generic issues and

questions

Source: adapted from (Upham, 2000c).

1. Which environmental capacity use should be indicated, and why?

In other words, which environmental capacities do you consider to be your

concern? Where is the boundary of the airport's responsibility defined, and

why?

2. How should capacities be defined?

A capacity involves a limit. Should we use locally negotiated limits? What

if these are contested? What should we use if there are none for

environmentally significant features, such as for biodiversity or fossil fuel

consumption? What limits should be used if the impacts are of known

global significance, but there are no agreed global limits or if there are no

protocols for relating an individual airport to an international commitment

(such as the UK’s Kyoto commitment)?

3. How should capacities be indicated?

Should we indicate at the level of (a) environmental pressure or human

activity (e.g. traffic movements), or (b) at the level of consequent stressors

(e.g. emissions to air or land take) or (c) at the level of environmental state

(e.g. local atmospheric concentrations or biodiversity)? How reliable is your

chosen solution and measurement unit? Are these also contested?

30

Table 1. Non-local environmental issues associated with airports

General causes Examples of airport-related

causes

Corresponding environmental problems distant from airport sites

Primary global biogeochemical cycles affected

Fossil fuel combustion

Aircraft propulsion and emissions. Surface access vehicle propulsion and emissions. Static power fuel consumption and emissions.

Global warming, acidification Carbon Nitrogen Sulphur

Deforestation Vegetation loss

Construction of airport site infrastructure: all paving, terminals, accommodation, support services. Surface access routes.

Global warming, biodiversity loss

Carbon

Mining for infrastructure

Extraction for all of the above (assumption of fossil fuel- powered).

Soil, water and air pollution, biodiversity and vegetation loss

Carbon Nitrogen Sulphur Metals

Source: adapted from Mannion (1999) and applied to aviation.

31

Table 2. London Luton Airport's use of regulated limits as local environmental

capacity limits

Local environmental issues identified by London Luton Airport

Local environmental capacity limits as interpreted by London Luton Airport

Discharges to water Environment Agency consents. Discharges to air Environment Agency consents.

National air quality standards (DETR, 2000c) will apply.

Ecological effects Impacts on non-statutory wildlife sites must be considered under national planning policy guidance (PPG9) "Nature Conservation" (DoE, 1994). Unavoidable losses would be "compensated appropriately" (LLAO, 2000: 76).

Landscape and visual effects The airport considers itself "within its capacity to absorb new development without causing significant landscape impacts" (LLAO 2000: 76).

Utility demand (energy and water) The airport explicitly sees utility demand reductions per unit of business output as its objective, not absolute reductions (LLAO, 2000: 76). Hence no limit is implied. Combustion of carbon fuels by aircraft is not seen its direct responsibility (LLAO, 2000: 77).

Solid Waste The airport recognises its contribution to use of regional landfill capacity and is committed to typical waste minimisation practices. Hence no limit is implied.

Noise The airport implies that no means for deriving an acceptable level of noise impact is evident, other than staying within existing guidelines (LLAO, 2000: 150).

Surface Access Surface access - the airport views baseline surface access capacity as the ability of local road capacity to provide free-flow conditions around the airport within air quality constraints (LLAO, 2000: 76). This actually relates to infrastructure capacity rather than environmental capacity.

32

33

Captions

Figure 1. Airport environmental capacity: summary of generic issues and questions

Table 1. Non-local environmental issues associated with airports

Table 2. London Luton Airport's use of regulated limits as local environmental

capacity limits