Hong Kong Roundtable on Private Sector Financing for Sustainable Transport

Background

The continued rapid economic growth in the Asia Pacific Region is enabled by a rapid growth in motorization and the same economic growth will spark off further motorization. Increased motorization is associated with a growing demand for fuel. These trends affect the energy security of the region and at the same time they also threaten to lock in the region to a high carbon emission trajectory.

The desirable policy response is to ensure that the expansion of transport infrastructure and services takes place in a more low-carbon oriented manner. There is growing consensus now that transport policies that focus on Avoiding unnecessary transport (through smart land use planning); Shifting passenger and freight transport to the most efficient modes; and Improving the environmental performance of transport can improve equitable access to goods and services while being less harmful to the environment. The IEA has estimated that a large scale adoption of the Avoid-Shift-Improve approach can result in cumulative savings of USD 50 Trillion compared to a baseline scenario of USD 500 Trillion in cumulative transport spending till 2050.

The transition to sustainable, low carbon transport requires large upfront investments. Traditional financing sources for sustainable transport infrastructure and services (e.g. public sector funding, end user revenue, official development assistance, and climate finance) will be insufficient in themselves to provide the needed funding to meet these targets and goals. Thus it will become increasingly important to turn to the private sector to help bridge this funding gap, through expanding the range of financial instruments, and increased use of public-private partnerships (PPPs), and related strategies to drive projects and programs in the sustainable transport sector.

Roundtable Objectives

The Hong Kong Roundtable intended to advance the dialogue on private sector financing in sustainable urban transport beyond the current status quo to meet climate change targets and sustainable development goals by:

• Reviewing the current state of private sector involvement in sustainable urban transport investment in the Asia Pacific region, and potential for increased future involvement
• Defining parameters to optimize interaction among the public and private sectors, reduce risk and expanding use of innovative financing instruments for sustainable urban transport
• Analyzing the role of global processes on climate change and sustainable development in accelerating private sector involvement in sustainable urban transport
• Exploring successful sustainable transport oriented case studies of public-private partnerships (PPPs) to date, while building strategies to address the need for more transformative change in the future
• Analyzing the role of non-traditional investors (e.g. institutional investors); to facilitate scaling up PPPs and private sector in financing of sustainable urban transport

Participants

The Hong Kong Roundtable had a specific focus on PPP units in developing Asian countries. The roundtable provides a platform for private sector organizations and financial institutions that fund transport, climate finance institutions, MDBs and bilateral development organizations, knowledge providers and advocacy organizations on sustainable transport.

About the Organizers

The Partnership on Sustainable Transport (SLoCaT Partnership) is a multi-stakeholder partnership of over 90 organizations (representing UN organizations, Multilateral and Bilateral development organizations, NGOs and Foundations, Academe and the Business Sector). Established in 2009, SLoCaT Partnership has its overarching goal to promote the integration of sustainable, low carbon transport in global policies on sustainable development and climate change. For more information, please visit www.slocat.net. 

The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) is one of the political foundations of the Federal Republic of Germany, which makes an active and substantial contribution to international cooperation and understanding. The regional programme in China has been designed to assist in clarifying the principles of the rule of law and to support the functionality of China’s institutions in practice. For more information, please visit www.kas.de/china/en/.

Partner Organizations

The Roundtable was organized in corporation with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) and the GIZ TRANSfer Project.

You can click here to download the Program Note. The Participant Profiles are also available in here. 

The workshop summary report is available in here.