Looking Back and Moving Forward

As the Fiscal Year ends, we thank our 56 member organizations, donors, and partners for another fantastic 12 months and reflect on our collective journey. Together, we elevated the “Just Transition” principle in the global debate on the right pathway to decarbonize the transport sector. We used every opportunity in our advocacy, knowledge work, and country action to demonstrate that it is possible to reduce carbon emissions of transport, without sacrificing progress on safety, efficiency, and inclusion.  

We began the Fiscal Year with SuM4all’s UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) Global Climate Action Group recognition as a Climate Champion. This recognition came at a time the global narrative on net-zero targets and zero-emission vehicles was shaping up for COP26. We put forward a contribution to this narrative, with a discussion paper taking the unique perspective of the least developed countries on e-mobility solutions. We discussed the urgent need to address the emerging Green Divide between high-income and least developed countries in terms of both the responsibility for and the response to climate change. By laying out a decision-making framework for e-mobility, the paper provided a set of criteria for assessing the country’s readiness to shift towards e-mobility.  

We pursued this discussion with our member organizations in February, identifying critical transport issues to bring to COP27. Relying on individual cars—electric or not—will not resolve the huge congestion and air pollution problems in rapidly growing cities in Africa. The solution to decarbonized mobility goes beyond mere passenger vehicle electrification. Creating livable and sustainable cities calls for a much higher level of ambition in transport, with adequate investments in high-quality public transport, walking, and cycling infrastructure. This will ensure that the transport transition towards low-carbon development is equitable.  We carried this message at the Second United Nations Sustainable Transport Conference,  Transforming Transportation 2022,  and the International Transport Forum (ITF) Summit 2022. 

At the end of the day, policy action is what will make a difference between advocacy and impact.  We continued to refine our Catalogue of Policy Measures toward Sustainable Mobility (CPM)--a unique repository of global policy knowledge. This second edition of the CPM now includes 194 policy measures, which are uniquely assessed for their resilience, country relevance, and impact on efficiency, safety, inclusively, and emissions impact. The case study on South Africa provided the platform to test and validate the value of the CPM for policy benchmarking, and the Global Tracking Framework for Transport for assessing sustainability gaps in the country’s transport system.  Finally, we trained over 600 country decision-makers and transport practitioners from more than 140 countries in the use of data and those new tools to ensure that transport investments and policies support the Sustainable Development Goals and are aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement.