Aviation’s climate agenda is still largely framed around emissions. Sustainable aviation fuels, carbon markets, cleaner aircraft technologies and the path to net zero by 2050 dominate much of the debate.
But reducing aviation’s contribution to climate change and preparing aviation systems for its physical impacts are two different tasks.
That distinction is becoming increasingly relevant for airports. Runways, terminals and other critical assets are built for long operating lives. Decisions made today can therefore shape how infrastructure performs under conditions that may evolve over the coming decades.
For the Caribbean, the question deserves particular attention. The region includes highly diverse airport systems, from major international gateways to smaller island facilities, operating with different traffic profiles, financial resources and infrastructure constraints. There is no single Caribbean resilience challenge.
What is increasingly clear, however, is that decarbonisation alone does not address the physical risks associated with a changing climate.
Adaptation is moving deeper into aviation planning
At ICAO Aviation Climate Week 2026, held in Montréal from 2 to 4 June, the International Civil Aviation Organization presented ongoing work on climate adaptation built around three areas: climate risk assessment, adaptation planning and resilience building.
The guidance is currently under development and is evolving into a more detailed ICAO manual.
That work sits alongside ICAO’s Climate Adaptation Synthesis Report, published in 2025. According to the presentation, the report brings together recent scientific evidence and stakeholder survey inputs to provide a picture of current climate risks in aviation, as well as progress and remaining challenges.
The data presented in Montréal gives the discussion more weight.
ICAO’s 2022 Climate Adaptation Survey received 259 responses across all seven ICAO regions, with participation from States, airports and civil aviation authorities, including Small Island Developing States. The survey found that 95% of respondents identified higher average and extreme temperatures among the leading climate risks, while 81% pointed to increased storm intensity, 74% to business and economic impacts, and 71% to changes in wind.
The same dashboard points to a significant implementation gap. While 74% reported risk assessments underway or planned, only 12% were already implementing adaptation measures. A further 17% planned implementation within the next five years, while 87% said more action was needed.
The figures do not describe the Caribbean specifically, and they should not be read as a regional readiness score. But they do show a broader aviation challenge: awareness of physical climate risk is advancing faster than implementation.
For the Caribbean, resilience is not a uniform problem
This distinction matters when looking at Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Aviation Climate Week presentation itself points to existing industry work specifically focused on adapting airports in Latin America and the Caribbean to a changing climate, alongside broader airport resilience and business continuity initiatives.
That regional focus is important because exposure does not translate automatically into the same operational risk everywhere.
A large hub with diversified revenues, dedicated engineering capacity and multiple investment options faces a different adaptation challenge from a smaller island airport with tighter capital constraints. Geography, asset condition, traffic structure, redundancy and institutional capacity all shape what resilience means in practice.
The question is therefore not whether every Caribbean airport faces the same threat. It is whether airport planning is sufficiently equipped to identify which physical risks matter most for each location, which assets are critical to continuity and where adaptation should be integrated into future investment decisions.
This changes the nature of the climate conversation.
For airport leaders, adaptation can intersect with capital planning, asset management and business continuity. Infrastructure programmes designed today may need to account for evolving risk profiles over decades of operation. The relevant response will vary by airport, but the planning horizon is inherently long-term.
That also creates a sequencing challenge. Airports are already balancing investment needs around capacity, safety, passenger experience, digitalisation, energy systems and decarbonisation. Adaptation adds another consideration to an already crowded capital agenda.
For smaller markets, the issue may be particularly difficult where technical capacity and access to finance are constrained. But this is precisely where caution is needed: resilience cannot be reduced to a simple divide between “large prepared hubs” and “small vulnerable airports”. Readiness depends on local conditions, governance, investment choices and the specific risks facing each system.
Net zero does not guarantee resilience
This may be one of the most important distinctions in aviation’s climate transition.
An airport can reduce operational emissions and still remain exposed to physical climate disruption. Equally, resilience investments do not replace the need to decarbonise.
The two agendas are complementary. They are not interchangeable.
For Caribbean aviation, this means the climate transition cannot be assessed only through emissions targets or the uptake of cleaner energy. It also raises questions about whether critical infrastructure and operating systems are being prepared for changing physical conditions.
ICAO’s move toward more structured guidance on climate risk assessment, adaptation planning and resilience building is therefore significant. It suggests that adaptation is becoming a more formal component of aviation’s long-term climate agenda.
The implementation gap identified in the ICAO survey makes that shift more urgent. Risk awareness is already widespread. The harder task is converting assessment into measures, investment decisions and operational preparedness.
For Caribbean airports, the question is not whether resilience should compete with net zero.
It is whether the region’s aviation systems can pursue both — reducing their climate impact while preparing critical infrastructure for the physical risks that are already shaping the global aviation agenda.
