[sustran] 100 Days to go to Rio+20: 100 Days to Avoid that Sustainable Transport falls by the Wayside in Rio in June.

[Cornie Huizenga]

Today, it is 100 days before the world community will gather again in Rio
de Janeiro to discuss, and hopefully agree on, an effective strategy to
make development in the world more sustainable.  The meeting is called
Rio+20 because it was 20 years ago that the world community met in Rio to
discuss environment and development.  Two main themes have been selected
for Rio+20: the Green Economy and the Institutional Framework for
Sustainable Development.


What to expect from Rio+ 20? And more specifically what can the sustainable
transport community expect from Rio+20? This should become clearer after
19-27 March when the development community will meet in New York for the
second round of discussions on the Zero Draft Outcome Document of the
Rio+20 Conference.   This draft outcome document of 19 pages was drawn up
by the Rio+20 Secretariat based on over 11.000 pages of submissions by 677
parties.   While transport was mentioned over 1000 times in the compilation
document it was mentioned only once in the Zero draft document. In
comparison energy is mentioned 15 times.


The imminent danger is that the Rio+20 process will turn out to be a
non-event for the sustainable transport community; an event they cannot use
to draw inspiration from in the promotion of sustainable transport.
Ignoring the role transport and mobility in providing access to markets,
goods and services will make it hard, if not impossible, to realize poverty
eradication and sustainable development which are the two ultimate goals of
developing a Green Economy.


It is regrettable that the Rio+20 process almost completely ignores
transport after having acknowledged it as an important key sector in the
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992
and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002; the
predecessors of the Rio+20 Conference.



Much progress has been made in 20 years since the UNCED conference in (a)
awareness raising on the importance of sustainable transport and linked to
that the understanding that current motorization patterns as they are
unfolding in emerging and developing economies are not sustainable from
social, environmental, and economic  perspectives ; and (b) development of
a new paradigm to guide the development of transport sector:  *Avoid* the
need for unnecessary travel of goods and services, *Shift* travel to the
most efficient mode and *Improve* the technologies used in transport. Not
only have all the elements of the Avoid-Shift-Improve approach been tested
at scale, they are also increasingly being integrated in policy and
investment frameworks.  Quick and full implementation of these policy and
investment frameworks  is required to help developing countries to provide
transport services to its growing population, especially in the urban
areas, without eating away at  the development these transport services are
contributing towards through additional congestion, road accidents, air
pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.


Policy making and planning for sustainable development is a mixture of
cross sectorial concepts – e.g. sustainable infrastructure or sustainable
urban development and sector specific policies and plans for – e.g. the
power sector, water supply and sanitation sector, or the transport sector.  It
is important to realize that institutional mandates, structures and budgets
are still largely dominated by the sectorial approach; this is especially
true in emerging and developing economies. It is important therefore that
these sectorial structures including the transport sector are guided in
their further development.


So, what can be done so that the Rio+20 conference will still live up to
its potential to give guidance to the further sustainable development of
transport infrastructure and services in emerging and developing economies?


The Partnership for Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) a
multi-stakeholder partnership of over 65 members, including development
banks, UN organizations, NGOs, research organizations and business sector
representatives, is implementing an outreach campaign to explain why it is
important to better integrate sustainable mobility in the Rio+20 campaign.
Also, it is working with its members and other stakeholders in developing
ideas and proposals on how to integrate sustainable mobility into the
outcomes of Rio+20.  SLoCaT is conducting its outreach campaign with
assistance of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy as
well as other members. For details of the SLoCaT Rio+20 Sustainable
Mobility Campaign see http://www.slocat.net/rio-plus-20.


SLoCaT would like to see that the Rio+20 process includes sustainable
mobility as a priority topic for the Green Economy and that it is added as
a possible subject area to be covered by a Sustainable Development Goal
(SDG).  The adoption of SDGs is still a topic of discussion but it is
intended that SDGs should complement and strengthen the Millennium
Development Goals in the development agenda for the post-2015 period, with
a view to establishing a set of goals in 2015 which are part of the
post-2015 UN Development Agenda.

If sustainable mobility were integrated in the outcomes of the Rio+20
conference, the SLoCaT partnership and its members would be able to take on
an active role in the implementation of Rio+20 agenda, in the following
areas:

a)             Knowledge management, including taking a lead role on the
transport part of the international knowledge-sharing platform called for
in the Zero Draft Outcome Document to facilitate countries’ green economy
policy design and implementation;

b)             Capacity building, including the transport part of a
capacity development scheme to provide country-specific advice and, where
appropriate, region and sector-specific advice to all interested countries

c)             Setting up partnerships between organizations, countries and
regions with an interest in sustainable mobility

d)             Setting goals, indicators and target on sustainable mobility
as part of the Green Economy and contribute to their monitoring

e)             Prioritize sustainable development options within financial
and technical cooperation on transport with developing countries

Members of the SLoCaT partnership annually fund over 100 transport projects
in developing countries with a value of well over US $ 10 billion. In
addition, a large part of all technical assistance and capacity building
assistance on sustainable mobility delivered to developing and emerging
economies is provided by members of the SLoCaT partnership.

The integration of sustainable mobility in the outcomes of the Rio+20
Conference Incorporating sustainable mobility in the Rio+20 process would
bring it in line with the sectorial priorities for a post-2015 sustainable
development framework outlined by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in his  Action
Agenda  for his second term.  Transport is listed as one of five building
blocks for the post 2015 sustainable development framework; the others
being energy, food and nutrition, water, and oceans.


Making sustainable mobility part of the outcomes of Rio+20 will require the
support from countries who are the ultimate negotiating parties in Rio in
June of this year. However, countries can be expected to be more
accommodating to the requests of the sustainable mobility community if the
countries understand why we are asking this and if they know what
contribution we can make to the implementation of sustainable mobility as a
contribution to realizing a Green Economy in the context of sustainable
development and poverty eradication. This will require an active
involvement of the entire sustainable transport community.


-- 
Cornie Huizenga
Joint Convener
Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport
Mobile: +86 13901949332
cornie.huizenga at slocatpartnership.org
www.slocat.net