Many countries do not report their aviation climate emissions to the UN.
Climate emissions from air traffic are about 50 percent higher than what has been reported to the UN so far. The matter is revealed in a study by the Norwegian University of Technology and Natural Sciences, NTNU. It’s in the news Norwegian public radio NRK.
NTNU found that in 2019 air traffic caused a total of 911 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Of this, however, only 604 million tons were reported to the UN.
There are several reasons why many countries do not report their emissions. Estimating emissions is difficult, and poor countries do not have the ability to do so.
Some wealthy countries, such as China and India, do not disclose their emissions even if they could. They appeal to the fact that when emissions reporting was agreed upon in the UN agreement in 1992, these were still considered developing countries, which were not subject to the same obligations as rich countries.
The United States causes the most air traffic emissions, followed by China. If we calculate the emissions per population, the third biggest polluters are Norwegians.
Emissions reporting would be useful in order to know how to allocate emission cuts correctly.
The study has been published In Environmental Research Letters.