ICAO Concludes Highly Successful 2016 World Aviation Forum

The second ICAO World Aviation Forum concluded on numerous positive notes at the UN aviation agency’s Montréal Headquarters today, bringing together over 800 senior government, air transport industry, UN, finance, development, and other leaders and forging progress on new aviation partnerships for sustainable development.

The high-level participants reaffirmed the critical importance of safe, secure and efficient air transport operations to the sustainable socio-economic development of cities, States, and regions, while exploring new means of creating momentum for greater cooperation to optimize these benefits.

They also agreed to work together to significantly boost the current 4.2% of annual Official Development Assistance (ODA) financing presently earmarked for air transport development globally.

“As we embark on this year’s Forum, we must remind ourselves of the enormous transformational power of aviation to improve the lives of people everywhere,” highlighted ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu in his keynote address. “Air transport connects States to regional and global markets, which in turn enhances travel, tourism and trade. It is the most efficient, and at times the only viable means to deliver humanitarian aid during crises, and for landlocked and small-island developing States especially, it represents a veritable lifeline, a critical aerial bridge to the rest of the world.”

Event panel discussions called on ICAO and world governments to accelerate the implementation of international civil aviation global standards and policies, plans and programmes, in support of ICAO’s No Country Left Behind initiative. They also called for sufficient resources to be made available for sustainable aviation development, and for States to include air transport infrastructure, modernization and related priorities at the heart of their national development strategies.

In her closing remarks, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu listed several of the important new partnerships forged during the event with the European Union, Germany, France, Airports Council International, World Bank, UN Habitat, and others, while noting that ICAO would now explore new ways of building on these successes.

“Over these last two Forums we have established a solid global consensus on what needs to be done,” she stressed, “but for future iterations I believe ICAO should explore evolving the IWAF model to a high-level dialogue on a more business oriented basis. ICAO would have a key role in helping States in the development of business cases, the evaluation of associated returns on investment, and on how project objectives align with global and regional planning targets.”

(Image provided with ICAO news release ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu providing the closing remarks to ICAO’s 2016 World Aviation Forum in Montréal)

FMI: www.icao.int