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Many low-carbon transport strategies can help achieve other economic, social and environmental objectives. These include improving access to mobility, reducing traffic and parking congestion, saving consumers money, supporting economic development, increasing public health and safety, and reducing air and noise pollution. Based on Avoid-Shift-Improve approaches and case studies from Germany, Colombia, India and Singapore, this paper shows that low-carbon transport generates significant and quantifiable benefits that can create a basis for political and societal coalitions.
Estimates suggest that currently available and cost effective measures can reduce transport Greenhouse Gas emissions by 40-50% compared to 2010. Yet, a number of barriers affect the optimal exploitation of this potential. Considering the possible economic, social and environmental benefits of sustainable transport, the shift towards a low-carbon pathway of this sector can be a win-win situation for climate protection and local development goals. This paper aims to make a contribution to understand these opportunities by highlighting the linkages between objectives, presenting case studies, facts and figures. The paper will also explore assessment methodologies and tools that can help practitioners to assess sustainable development benefits (SDB) and providing evidence for policy-makers to make more informed decisions on transport investments and polices.
This paper presents a novel governance concept for sustainable development, introducing the "Safe System Approach" as a transformative model that shifts focus from individual behavioural change to systemic transformation. This approach challenges traditional governance models that emphasize individual responsibility in achieving sustainable development and decarbonization. Instead, it advocates for creating an enabling environment that inherently guides individuals and communities towards sustainable actions. The Safe System Approach is centred on delivering low-carbon services across essential sectors, including electricity, mobility, industry, buildings, human settlements, and agriculture, thereby embedding sustainability as a default choice in societal systems. Drawing parallels with successful models in road safety, the paper explores the potential of this approach in urban development and climate action. It emphasizes the need for a broad coalition and integrated approaches in managing shared resources, highlighting the significance of systemic adjustments over individual behavioral change. By proposing a structure where sustainability is facilitated by the system's design, the paper builds on key concepts from seminal works by scholars like Garrett Hardin, Mancur Olson, Elinor Ostrom, and Ahrend Lijphart. It discusses the challenges and opportunities in creating safe operating spaces for sustainable development, emphasizing the need for multi-actor, multilevel governance systems that can manage shared resources sustainably and are resilient to political volatility. The paper aims to offer a robust, efficient, and inclusive pathway to sustainable development, contributing to the global discourse on environmental and social resilience.
The number of motorcycle taxis has soared in East African cities over the last decades, filling a gap in mobility needs while providing revenue opportunities to drivers. However, poor road safety combined with contribution to carbon emissions and air pollution creates a sustainability conundrum, which has led governments to control or repress the mode, yet without much success. After reviewing the characteristics and regulation of motorcycle taxis in Nairobi, Kigali, and Kampala, this study investigates the existence and impacts of two recent trends: digitalization and electrification. A comprehensive approach is adopted with a systematic review of the literature and policies, completed by field research and key informant interviews. We find out that electrification is mostly associated with positive impacts covering a spectrum of environment, economics, health, and social-related benefits, while the benefits of digitalization are more uncertain or contested. Impacts are however limited for both at the time of study as digitalization is highly volatile and electrification nascent. In conclusion, the paper identifies an interlinkage between the trends via the example of data, and further key research needs.
This article aims to analyse the potential for international climate governance to promote the decarbonisation of land transport. It first summarises challenges and barriers that impede the transformation of the sector. On this basis, the article discusses how international governance could potentially assist with overcoming these barriers and mobilising potentials. Subsequently, the article analyses to what extent existing international governance institutions deliver on the potential identified. The analysis finds that while there is a large number of international institutions trying to promote the decarbonisation of land transport, none of them emerge saliently as hubs or core institutions. There is a substantial amount of activity to generate and disseminate knowledge and learning, but the potential for providing guidance and signal, setting rules, providing transparency/accountability and means of implementation could be further exploited. The article concludes with suggestions on how international governance may be strengthened.
2019 haben das Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, die Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, das Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie und das Ecological Research Network das Netzwerk Reallabore der Nachhaltigkeit gegründet. Die Kommunikations- und Kooperationsplattform will zu einer transformativen Nachhaltigkeitsforschung beitragen.
Much mitigation-related governance activity is evident in a range of sectoral systems, and regarding particular governance functions. However, there is a tendency for this activity to relate to the easiest functions to address, such as "learning and knowledge building", or to take place in somewhat limited "niches". Across all sectoral systems examined, the gap between identified governance needs and what is currently supplied is most serious in terms of the critical function of setting rules to facilitate collective action. A lack of "guidance and signal" is also evident, particularly in the finance, extractive industries, energy-intensive industries, and buildings sectoral systems.
Of the sectoral systems examined, the power sector appears the most advanced in covering the main international governance functions required of it. Nevertheless, it still falls short in achieving critical governance functions necessary for sufficient decarbonisation. Significantly, while the signal is strong and clear for the phase-in of renewable energy, it is either vague or absent when it comes to the phase-out of fossil fuel-generated electricity. The same lack of signal that certain high-carbon activities need actively to be phased out is also evident in financial, fossil-fuel extractive industry and transport-related sectors.
More effective mitigation action will need greater co-ordination or orchestration effort, sometimes led by the UNFCCC, but also from the bodies such as the G20, as well as existing (or potentially new) sector-level institutions. The EU needs to re-consider what it means to provide climate leadership in an increasingly "polycentric" governance landscape.
Decision-making in sustainable urban mobility planning : common practice and future directions
(2015)
The European Commission aims to foster sustainable local transport systems through the concept of "Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans" (SUMPs). This paper is intended as a think piece highlighting the challenges for cities in selecting sustainable and cost-effective transport and mobility measures. Not only does the paper convey an understanding of the challenges of determining a transport project's viability, but it also presents five case studies of sustainable urban mobility planning and the role of project appraisal in those policy-making processes.
Investments in urban transport should deliver the maximum economic, social and environmental benefits; in times of constrained budgets, projects' economic viability is often the deciding factor. This paper discusses the current practices and challenges facing cities in assessing urban transport interventions. On this basis, it develops options for decision-makers to appraise small-scale, sustainable urban transport policy measures.
The analysis of current appraisal practice shows that data requirements and complexity are cities’ main obstacles appraising projects and comparing potential alternatives. Additionally, there is often a risk that project appraisal enters the planning process too late to play any meaningful role. Conducting a Cost-benefit
analysis (CBA) ex-ante is often only approved if the implementation of the measure in question is already likely. Often, a CBA is a means to access funds rather than a basis for decision-making. Project appraisal of small-scale and non-infrastructure-based measures is often simply too expensive.
On the basis of these findings, the paper discusses the following alternatives to comprehensive CBAs: 1) learn from others, 2) use a simplified assessment method, 3) rely on norms and values. All of these options aim to cope with the trade-off between effort and certitude. In practice, some policy-makers may already apply one or more of these options, but this has not been documented in a systematic manner. A systematic documentation of such practices could be a major step forward for implementation of sustainable and integrated urban transport projects, as it would shed some light on the reasoning behind decisions, from which conclusions could be drawn on the likely follow-on effects thereof and also possible improvements to the process.
Cities around the globe are implementing innovative transport solutions as part of measures to address pertinent socio-economic and environmental challenges in urban areas and help drive the transition to low carbon development. Planning and implementing such solutions require an effective and collective approach that includes the needs and aspirations of all relevant stakeholders. In the planning and implementation of urban transport projects, capacity building components have assumed great significance but seem to be the most eluded activity for project implementers. The Living Lab concept, which allows for co-creation in innovation development, presents the opportunity to adopt innovative participatory approach in capacity building activities in transport projects; and is largely seen as a potential catalyst for rapid transformation to low carbon and sustainability transitions in cities. To this end, this paper highlights the usefulness of the Living Lab approach and provides some perspectives on how key elements of the approach are adapted in the process of assessing the capacity needs of nine (9) cities in planning and implementing e-mobility innovations. The cities are participating in an innovation research project. In the case studied, the project’s capacity needs assessment process was analyzed using an assessment framework built on four (4) key elements of the Living Lab approach, namely: extent of real-life contextualization, level of participation, diversity of stakeholders, and the time span of engagement. Insights from the assessment suggest that relevant project partners and city representatives with diverse expertise were actively involved from the onset and throughout the first 5 months of the project in defining and refining the capacity needs of partner cities based on local e-mobility conditions. This co-creative process helped determine priority areas where the need for capacity building mostly lied. Designing and operationalizing capacity building interventions tailored to the identified needs, as realized in the project, could therefore help build the necessary capacity and complement other measures aimed at developing e-mobility in the project’s partner cities.