Climate Change and Sustainable Transport

UNDA Project on the development and implementation of a monitoring and assessment tool for CO2 emissions in inland transport to facilitate climate change mitigation

The UNECE Transport Division initiated a new project to study the impact of inland transport on climate change and called the UN Development Account (UNDA) for funds to build up this project together with all UN Regional Commissions, as climate change is a global problem and needs a global solution. The funds for this 3 years project have been released and the work activities are in progress. The implementation of this project started in January 2011. Further information on this project including background documents are available here.

The main objective of the project is to enhance international cooperation and planning towards sustainable transport policies through the development and use of a standard monitoring and assessment tool for CO2 emissions in inland transport including a transport policy converter. This first activity within this project is to develop an information and analysis tool based on a uniform methodology for the data collection, the evaluation of the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the inland transport sector (road, rail and waterways except national and international aviation and maritime transport), taking into account climate-relevant indicators and new transportation trends. All regions will address the full scale of the project.

The methodology for evaluating CO2 emissions would serve as a tool that could be used by all UN Member States to analyze a wide range of questions linked to CO2 emissions and to optimize the use of energy sources in the transport sector, not only the permanent increase of the road vehicle fleets (including the different types of propulsion systems), the future extensions of the transport infrastructure (including Intelligent Transport Systems) and the availability of sustainable energy sources, but also the transport on railways and inland waterways, including intermodal transport. In addition, a transport policy converter will be included to take into consideration the implementation of regional, national or local transport policy measures. Thus, it would also be a powerful and transparent analysis tool to develop future transport strategies and to support policy decisions by the Member States (taking into account legal and economic aspects such as the introduction of tax incentives for environmentally friendly vehicles or for the use intermodal transport and logistics as well as social behaviours e.g. consumer behaviour after information campaigns) in order to receive feedback on the impact of their different policy scenarios on the economy.

In a further step, the above mentioned assessment tool for inland transport CO2 emissions will be complemented with a catalogue of recommendations on a number of possible measures on how users can reduce their CO2 emissions within road, rail and inland waterways transport. Finally, a number of capacity building workshops and training sessions will be organized in all UN Regional Commissions aimed at raising the awareness of policy makers on the need of actions for climate change mitigation and adaptation, providing a rational basis for sustainable transport policies and effective measures as well as enhancing the skills for the use of the assessment tool for inland transport CO2 emissions.

The tool will be structured to easily permit an enlargement to other greenhouse gases (GHG), gaseous pollutants or other transport modes, subject to further funding.  It is intended to make the tool publicly accessible and free of charge via the UNECE website. UNECE seeks the cooperation of its member states and key stakeholders to participate in this important, complex and global project. For more information on this project please contact us ([email protected]).