On May 2014, the SLoCaT Partnership launches a new blog reporting live from transport events around the world. The first live blog posts started with the Abu Dhabi Ascent, the prepaparatory meeting for UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September 2014. The Abu Dhabi Ascent Blog will be followed by the International Transport Forum which will take place on May 21-23, 2014 in Leipzig, Germany.
SLoCaT @ International Transport Forum
Financing Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport – an uncompleted, but critical, agenda to realize sustainable development by Cornie Huizenga, Thursday, May 15
The sustainable transport community got a boost on 4-5 May at the Ascent Meeting in Abu Dhabi, which was an important staging post for the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit on 23 September in New York. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has decided to engage directly on climate change to help ensure that the new climate change agreement that is to be agreed in December 2015 in Paris, France will be sufficiently ambitious.
6 Transport related initiatives were presented in Abu Dhabi divided over 4 impact areas: transportation; cities; energy; and short-lived climate pollutants. The 6 initiatives reflect well the growing consensus that effective action on transport needs to combine an expansion of transport infrastructure and services with a reduction of the negative externalities of transport including greenhouse gas emissions. If success fully implemented these Ascent transportation initiatives will result in an expansion of railways that at the same time will be more energy efficient; wider use of public transport through amongst other Bus Rapid Transit systems; accelerated introduction of electric vehicles in urban areas; improved fuel efficiency of new light duty car fleets; and greater action on the greening of freight and logistics. Read More…
Change is ‘carbon free’ air – General reflections from the Abu Dhabi Ascent– Heather Allen, Monday 5 May
An interesting choice of title for this ‘meeting of the willing’ in Abu Dhabi – the Abu Dhabi Ascent – especially when all talk was of ‘decent’ . Reduction of emissions, decreased use of fossil fuels, removal of subsidies, fewer this, less that…. all focussing on efforts to get the lines on the majority of the graphs presented to turn around and start going down. Transport terminology also abounded in all conversations on stage in plenary and in the corridors! Accelerator initiatives, vehicles for change, changing gear to mention a few of the phases that popped up all the time! It was gratifying to see that there was also space for transport itself at the meeting – with 3 direct commitments being launched and several other transport related ones under other clusters such as energy efficiency. Read more…