Position Paper on Collaborative Environmental Management (CEM)
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Airport Regions Council (ARC) is the association of regional and local authorities across Europe with an airport situated within or near their territories. ARC represents the interests of its members and brings together a wide range of expertise at the interface of airports and air transport with local and regional policies. A common concern is to maximise the societal benefits generated by airports and to minimise their environmental impact on the surrounding communities.
ARC members believe that Collaborative Environmental Management (CEM) Working Arrangement is a welcomed proposal as it can provide a platform for operational stakeholder collaboration that could significantly reduce environmental impacts. Benefits could be achieved in terms of improved environmental performance (e.g. reduced noise and emissions through implementation of CDO[1] and PBN[2]), development of Climate Adaptation plans and improved communication through robust dialogue thus building trust and long-term engagement.
Why do airport regions welcome CEM?
ARC members view the Collaborative Environment Management (CEM) Specification developed by EUROCONTROL as a potential framework to elaborate or improve the relationships between public territorial administrations and airports. It can help to stablish predictability and efficiency relationship with the airport that can lead to collaborative solutions beneficial to all stakeholders involved.
Moreover, we believe CEM contains a sound generic methodology that facilitates concrete collaborative solutions being implemented by the key operational stakeholders to minimise the environmental impacts of airports and aviation in general. If implemented effectively, including -as sine qua non condition- a continued and organised dialogue channel with local authorities and communities, the adoption of the CEM Specification can contribute to both achieving sustainable development goals and deliver in other areas of high importance to our members such as quality of life, health outcomes, air quality and noise.
The CEM specification contains a number of optional elements that ARC members believe should be implemented in order for the surrounding area of the airport to be involved in the decision-making and dialogue processes.
1. Short description of CEM
The CEM Specification formalises internal collaboration amongst the core operational stakeholders at and around airports. The objective is to minimise the environmental impact of their combined operations, by setting out generic, high level requirements and recommended practices necessary to either establish CEM Working Arrangements or, flexibly adapt existing ones in a pragmatic protocol to suit local needs and capabilities. Outcomes from CEM can feed into established dialogue channels with local authorities and local communities to address common concerns.
2. Airport Regions and CEM
The collaborative process includes public consultations (such as public workshops) with the three stakeholder groups, to be held in a non-competitive setting. It is important to note that none of the stakeholders manage any of the others and that the central goal is to understand the interdependencies between activities of stakeholders.
It is a process that takes into account the interdependencies between core stakeholders inside and outside the airport – airport operators, aircraft operators and air traffic control (ANSPs) as well as local authorities and communities.
3. Opportunities of CEM
ARC welcomes the opportunities of this working arrangement as it sees it as:
· A harmonised approach agreed at a European level to tackle environmental impacts at the local level, hence comparability for the implementation of level playing fields
· A framework to support understanding and awareness of environmental / operation interdependencies among internal operational stakeholders
· A focus to identify the root causes of environmental impacts / risks and facilitate solutions
· A working agreement to facilitate a robust and transparent dialogue that can harmonise relations with authorities and engagement with local communities and businesses.
4. Conclusions
ARC members believe that the CEM specification can be useful in managing the relationship with the airports, citing the numerous reasons above. We believe that the relationship with external stakeholders of airports is crucial and this specification may help to solve issues that many European airport regions are facing at the moment.
ARC members believe that the CEM working arrangement must always include permanent dialogue and agreements with local authorities and communities as a must.
Therefore, we ask European, national and regional authorities as well as the core operational stakeholders in all EU regions to adopt and use CEM as a first step to establish permanent and fruitful relationships fruitful for all stakeholders.
