Following up on last month’s newsletter, and the work done by the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLoCat), the Partnership has been active in the COP22 side-meetings. On Thursday the 17th of November, SLoCat’s Secretary General and the co-converener of the PPMC, Cornie Huigenza, presented to the Patricia Espinosa the COP22 Declaration on Accelerated Action on Adaptation in Transport.This is a shift for the transport sector, who until now has largely focused its efforts on mitigating climate change. The launch of the movement associated to the Declaration on Accelerated Action on Adaptation in Transport, was done at the COP22 event focused on Transport Adaptation in Africa and in reaction to the Moroccan Presidency’s priority on adaptation to the transport and development community.

As now, 395 individuals and 55 organizations have signed the Declaration including:

– International Energy Agency
– World Bank
– Islamic Development Bank
– Global Environment Facility
– International Road Federation
– UN-ECE
– Nordic Development Fund

The Declaration commits its signatories to:
• Raise the profile of adaptation in discussions on climate change and transport.
• Promote climate risk screening and vulnerability assessment of existing transport systems, services and all new projects.
• Encourage the use of approaches aimed at ‘adapt at construction and at asset renewal’.
• Encourage the upgrade and adoption of industry relevant technical standards to ensure transport infrastructures are climate resilient with appropriate adaptive capacities to minimize future risk.
• Leverage additional climate finance to shift public and private investments towards resilient transport systems.
• Integrate adaptation into system design and operation, including through enhanced emergency preparedness and adequately resourced maintenance activity.
• Strengthen coordination across agencies.
• Build capacity at local, national and international levels on transport adaptation.
• Integrate transport into general adaptation programs and activities, and strengthen coherence between sectors.
• Develop appropriate metrics, monitoring, evaluating and reporting procedures so we can continuously learn and adapt over long timescales.

 

Photo Credit: Dario Hidalgo (@dhidalgo58)