Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Sustainable mobility could connect 1 billion people, increase GDP by 2.6 trillion, cut 1.9 gigatons of CO2

The Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) initiative launched today the Global Roadmap of Action toward Sustainable Mobility (GRA), a tool to guide country decision-makers on ‘how to’ achieve mobility that is efficient, accessible, safe and green.
The event brought together global leaders in the sector to discuss country and city actions for achieving greener, safer, more efficient, and equitable mobility. The GRA follows the 2017 launch of Global Mobility Report, the first-ever global assessment of the transport sector across all modes.
With growing urbanisation, increasing world trade and new technologies, the global mobility system is stressed. More than 1 billion people, or one-third of the global rural population, lacks access to all-weather roads and transport services, a major barrier to social and economic advancement. The GRA will help tackle this urgency by taking a holistic approach of sustainability and offering concrete policy solutions countries can adapt and adopt to achieve sustainable mobility.
As a tool, the GRA helps countries identify gaps, crucial steps, and appropriate policies to ensure that transport contributes to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and improve the sustainability of their transport system.
According to the GRA, globally, one billion more people would be connected to education, health and jobs if we close the transport access gap in rural areas, improvements in border administration, transport and communication infrastructure could increase global GDP by up to $2.6 trillion and an additional 1.6 billion people would breathe cleaner air, if transport pollution was halved.
“The current mobility system takes a heavy toll on our planet and leaves many people behind. In most cases, it is also expensive, inefficient, and unsafe,” Programme Manager of SuM4All and World Bank Lead Economist Nancy Vandycke said, adding that the GRA is the first comprehensive effort to look across the four policy goals of accessibility, efficiency, safety, and green mobility for all modes of transport with a focus on action. “It serves as an important tool for policymakers to act now and turn the vision of sustainable transport into a reality.”
“Global challenges call for global solutions and making freight transportation sustainable is no exception,” secretary-general of UNCTAD Mukhisa Kituyi said, adding that multilateral approaches underpinned by a shared vision, a sense of community and multi-stakeholder collaboration, are the ultimate safeguard against impractical solutions that distort the playing field while leaving behind the most vulnerable and the weakest. “Achieving freight transportation systems that are truly economically efficient, environmentally sound and socially inclusive would otherwise be impossible.”
The GRA report is the outcome of more than 18 months of work by 55 influential organisations, 180 experts, and consultations with 50 public decision makers and 25 private corporations. SuM4All is an umbrella platform supported by 55 public and private organisations with a shared ambition to transform the future of mobility.

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