The world does not lack ambition for sustainable transport. But what it now needs is a shared framework supported by a clear vision, rigorous metrics, reliable data, visible reporting, and real accountability. During this UN HLPF official side event, join leading international experts to discuss targets that will determine the success of the UN Decade of Sustainable Transport.
On 7 July, an official side event of the 2026 SDG High Level Political Forum puts that question on the table at UN Headquarters. Ambition to Impact: Connecting the SDGs and the UN Decade for Sustainable Transport through Monitoring brings research, evidence and frontline practice into the same room, anchored to the three goals under review this year: SDG 7 on energy, SDG 9 on infrastructure and SDG 11 on cities, all of which can not be achieved without transpor
The three goals under review at this year’s HLPF are SDG 7 on energy, SDG 9 on infrastructure and SDG 11 on cities. None of them is a parallel track to transport. Each one runs through it.
On energy, transport still draws 95.4% of its power from fossil fuels, and switching to electric vehicles only counts as progress if the grid behind them is clean. Electrification has to be paced to the growth of renewables, or it just moves the emissions somewhere else. On cities, SDG 11.2.1 asks a deceptively simple question, whether people can actually reach a public transport stop, and for far too many the answer is still no. On infrastructure, the freight and logistics that underpin SDG 9 keep the global economy moving while driving one of the fastest-rising emissions curves in the whole sector. The thread connecting all three is the same: how we power transport, how we build it, and who can actually use it decides whether these goals advance or stall.
The UN Decade of Sustainable Transport exists to close the distance between what is needed, what has been promised and what has been delivered. But a decade of action is only as credible as the evidence behind it. Declarations do not cut emissions, lift people out of transport poverty or keep them safe. Tracked, comparable, transparent progress does. That is why monitoring is not the dull back office of this agenda. It is the thing that tells us whether any of it is working.
Tuesday 7 July 2026, 1:15 to 2:30 pm UN Headquarters, New York, Conference Room CR-F
Open to participants registered and security cleared for the 2026 HLPF.
The good practice panel puts Global South leadership at the centre rather than the margins:
- Abimbola Akinajo, Managing Director of Lagos’s metropolitan transport authority (LAMATA), on infrastructure in developing economies
- Choudhury Rudra Charan Mohanty Environment Programme Coordinator (UNCRD) on the Aichi 2030 Declaration and a decade of environmentally sustainable transport across Asia
- Sang-Jin Shin, Mayor of Seongnam City, Republic of Korea, on walking, cycling and bike sharing
- Mark Major, Senior Strategy Director (Kuehne Climate Centre) on the global outlook for freight.
- With opening remarks from Erin Tansey, Program Director, Sustainable Inclusive Economies, The International Development Research Centreand closing remarks from Carly Gilbert-Patrick, Secretary General, SLOCAT Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport & Holger Dalkmann, Senior Consultant, Asian Development Bank (ADB)
The event is co-hosted by SLOCAT, UN DESA UNCRD, GIZ, WRI, Climate Compatible Growth, the Asian Development Bank, the the RIDE programme, funded by UK International Developmen, the Transport Data Commons, and IDRC (Canada).
If you will be in New York for the HLPF, join us. This is where the case gets made that a resilient, low carbon and inclusive transport future is not a slogan but something we can measure, and therefore something we can accelerate.
This side event is part of a full day which puts the focus on both the UN Decade for Sustainable Transport and the need for a Global Transport Goal and Targets. The morning opens with the first Annual Stocktake of the UN Decade of Sustainable Transport (2026 to 2035), convened by UN DESA, taking the measure of a Decade only months old.
That second half of the question is the one we still need to answer. Monitoring can tell us whether transport is moving in the right direction; on its own, it cannot tell us where that direction should lie. The Decade needs a north star, a single Global Goal for Transport with measurable targets beneath it, so that scattered commitments resolve into one shared destination.
SLOCAT is opening a consultation this June which will go on through the year, and includes a strategic workshop with ITDP in July against the backdrop of the HLPF; to define the criteria for the goal and the targets. A resilient, low carbon and inclusive transport future is something we can measure and also something we can all work towards as a community.
For any information please contact: secretariat@slocatpartnership.org
