SLoCaT Partnership has created the Transport Blog @ Climate Summit as a platform for experts from a variety of topics in sustainable transport to share their insights in anticipation to the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit.
The Blog features 8 experts from walking to rail industry, and from road safety to rural transport:
Tuesday September 23, 2014
The Vital Role of Rural Transport
By Robert Petts, Rural Transport Adviser to SLoCaT Partnership and AFCAP
After over one hundred years of the motor vehicle era, we still have over a billion of the world’s population without reliable road access to markets, health education and other services, employment and other social and economic opportunities. They are mostly living in poor rural communities in developing and emerging nations, with access often severed for long periods in wet seasons. Read more…
Monday September 22, 2014
Three Big Opportunities for Meaningful Progress on Climate Change at Climate Summit
By Holger Dalkmann, Acting Global Director Cities And Transport – Director EMBARQ, World Resources Institute (WRI)
City leaders have a key role to play at next week’s UN Climate Summit in New York City, which brings together heads of state, mayors, business leaders, and civil society to build momentum towards an international agenda to tackle climate change and build resilience. Read more…
Saturday September 20, 2014
Climate Change: the European Rail Industry on the Frontline
by Philippe Citroën, Director General of UNIFE
While greenhouse gas emissions in many sectors decreased significantly between 1990 and 2009, emissions from transport increased 28% during this same period. It is therefore of utmost importance to decarbonize the transport sector. Read more…
Friday September 19, 2014
By Leena Klossner, Deputy Director, Nordic Development Fund (NDF)
Climate change and related extreme weather events threaten the society, its infrastructure, public and private assets. Transport sector is no exception. Given the cross-sectoral nature of transport itself, the realization of climate change impacts globally may provide an interesting window of opportunity for re-thinking the ways how sustainable transport solutions can foster inter-sectoral planning, and thereby support the process towards a comprehensive way to deal with climate change adaptation. Read more…
Thursday September 18, 2014
More Cycling – we have a strong case!
by Dr. Bernhard Ensink, Secretary General of European Cyclists’ Federation and World Cycling Alliance
More cycling helps to build inclusive, safe, sustainable cities and human Settlements.
More cycling helps to create low carbon mobility systems all over the world. If e.g. the levels of cycling in the European Union were equivalent to those found in Denmark, one of the European forerunner cycling countries, the bicycle use would help achieve 12 to 26% of the 2050 EU target reduction set for the transport sector, our study on quantifying CO2 emissions concludes. And more cycling saves additionally CO2 emissions as cycling is a good feeder for urban and regional public transport systems. Read more…
Wednesday September 17, 2014
New Roadmap for Low Carbon Inclusive Urban Transportation
by Michael Replogle, Managing Director Policy and Founder, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)
More than $100 trillion in cumulative public and private spending and 1,700 megatons of annual carbon dioxide (CO2) – a 40 percent reduction of urban passenger transport emissions-could be eliminated by 2050 if the world expands public transportation, walking and cycling in cities, according to a new study, A Global High Shift Scenario, by Lew Fulton and myself, published by the University of California, Davis, and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). This would give a major boost to the public transport mobility of the poorest half of the world’s population, expanding access to opportunities for work, education, and health services. Read more…
Tuesday September 16, 2014
Improving road safety is part of the Climate agenda
by Saul Billingsley, Director General, FIA Foundation
Poor road safety is a symptom of transport dysfunction. Road crashes kill and seriously injure many thousands of people every day. The economic cost is between 2-4% of GDP. Countries with high levels of road traffic death and injury are also oftenmore likely to have an inefficient and inequitable transport system. Many are travelling at high speed in the wrong direction along the unsustainable path towards high carbon mobility. By putting in place strategies for low carbon transport we can improve road safety, and vice versa. Read more…
Monday September 15, 2014
Walking: more footprints = less carbon
by Bronwen Thornton, Development Director, Walk 21
Walking is not just low-carbon, it is the lowest-carbon mode of transport. And it is the essential thread that weaves all our other transport systems together. Without walking, we don’t have passengers to ride buses and trains, drive low emission cars, join car clubs or ride share bikes. Read more..