"What’s good for the city is good for the country," said Claudia López, mayor of Bogota making the case for electrifying mass transit to achieve climate goals. Together with Bogota, several other cities are rethinking their urban transport, from reviving electric tram lines to building cable cars. How do these cities make mass transit more attractive?

David Ward, President of the UK's Towards Zero Foundation, discusses the future of transport and mobility in a recent episode of the International Resource Panel (IRP) Webcast Series "What does the Global Future hold?"

Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash

The UK MPs on the Transport Select Committee have today joined growing the growing chorus of calls for the government to introduce a zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate in a bid to accelerate the market for electric cars ahead of petrol and diesel sales coming to an end in 2030.

Among a series of recommendations for boosting supply and demand of electric vehicles (EVs) ahead of the 2030 phase out sales of fossil fuel cars and 2035 phase out of hybrids, the Committee called for regulatory requirements for carmakers to sell a minimum proportion of zero emission cars which trends upwards over time, or - if unable to reach targets - to purchase credits from from other manufacturers.

A senior manager at aircraft maker Airbus says that zero-emissions planes will be flying by mid-century, reports BBC News. It adds: “Airbus has set a target of commercial ‘climate-neutral’ flights by 2035, with hydrogen as a primary power source.” It quotes Gareth Davies, Airbus head of industrial architecture for wing, saying: “We have a challenge today to try and symbolically get towards a zero emissions product by around 2050…So, essentially, we’re looking at by the mid-point of the century, that we will have products flying with that target and with that goal.”

The treaty is structured around a fundamental right and a fundamental duty. The first article proposes the first ever binding formulation, at a global level, of the right of “every person […] to live in an ecologically sound environment”.

The Pact is a compass defining a direction by means of converging binding principles. Such principles should be used first and foremost as legal parameters to design policies, both domestic and international, that prevent further environmental harm.

Aviation is one of the world’s most carbon-intensive sectors and one of the hardest to decarbonize. Now, however, a new framework has been developed by a wide range of industry partners to cut emissions by stimulating the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) via a system of certificates.

ESCAP addresses issue of sustainable urban transport, as outlined in the Regional Action Programme for Sustainable Transport Connectivity in Asia and the Pacific, phase I (2017-2021). A regional meeting entitled “Asia-Pacific Sustainable Urban Transport Systems for the 2030 Agenda” was organized on 9 and 10 June 2021 in a virtual format. The high-level meeting provided a platform for the exchange of regional and global best practices which address sustainable urban transport systems in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 3, 11 and 13).

In May 2021, ICLEI’s Sustainable Mobility team organized a session on “Transitioning towards e-buses: Barriers and opportunities”.

Reflecting learnings in different contexts, the consensus is clear: e-buses still present technological, financial, and institutional barriers and the transition to a full electric bus fleet requires an integrated introduction of a new ecosystem built around policy, infrastructure and financing. The question remains: how could cities plan the transition and pilot new buses to help transform mobility in support of sustainable development goals?

The global coronavirus pandemic brought a wave of public and private initiatives to help societies adapt and recover, from economic stabilization and safety measures to new business models and shifts in consumption. Many of these initiatives are not green, despite the fact that society needs major changes to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change and ensure health and equity for all.

Transport is a key sector in need of big changes, comprising 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 24% of carbon emissions. Meanwhile, over a million traffic fatalities occur every year, millions are exposed to deadly air pollution on roads and the majority of residents in many cities — often the poorest — cannot reach a job within an hour of travel time.

In a new paper with the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance, WRI evaluated countries’, cities’ and companies’ actions during the pandemic that impact the transport sector. They found that of the $298 billion in global recovery funds catalogued by the Energy Policy Tracker in the transport sector between March 2020 and February 2021, only 44% positively affect the climate and sustainability.