Abstract:
The growing concern about climate change and environmental protection
represent significant barriers towards growth in the aviation sector. Currently,
airport operators need to consider not only noise control and local air, soil and
water pollution management, but also to control the consumption of nonrenewable
natural resources and to minimise their impact on climate change.
A detailed analysis of current applied practices pointed out that the main issues
that airports need to manage, have to do principally with control of natural
resources consumption, control of noise and management of emissions, water
quality, waste and ecosystems. Although these issues in most of cases have been
identified, airports’ priorities regarding their management were not easily
acknowledged.
The key findings of this research suggest that in the case of environmental
management strategies, different patterns exist; thus, some airports seem to seek
balance mostly between mitigating global and local environmental issues or
resource consumption control and pollution management, while others obviously
take measures aimed at managing one or the other impact. In the case of water
management efficiency, while many airports seem to have applied measures to
sustain water quality, only a few of them have applied sufficient consumption
control measures.
