UN climate chief urges action on transport emissions

The UN's top climate change official yesterday issued an ultimatum to the global transport industry, warning that the sector could either willingly work to help shape the legislation that will make up a post-Kyoto agreement, "or have your policies shaped by it".

Speaking at the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary Yvo de Boer warned that current political action on transport-related emissions is "woefully inadequate" and that urgent action was required to combat the sector's soaring carbon footprint.

While many other sectors of the global economy have seen growth in carbon emissions slow, or even fall in recent years, the transport sector, fuelled by booming demand from emerging economies, is seeing its carbon footprint expand rapidly. According to UNFCCC data, greenhouse gas emissions from transport have seen the highest increase of all sectoral emissions in recent years with emissions from transport in industrialised countries having increased by 30.5 per cent by 2010 against the 1990 baseline.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has similarly warned that global emissions from transport are expected to increase by 80 per cent on current levels by 2030.

"All of the current trends in transport fly in the face of what science tells us is required," said de Boer. "Developed countries now need to start thinking hard about what short and medium-term sectoral emission reductions they want to commit to in the transport sector, along with what interim targets they want to build in on the way."

Many in the transport sector have argued that technical innovations such as electric or fuel cell powered cars and the development of more efficient aircraft will help curb emissions over the next two or three decades. However, de Boer warned that policy instruments would also be required and that stakeholders in the transport sector should be working with the UN to work out the best way to include transport emissions in the post-Kyoto agreement scheduled to be finalised at a meeting in Copenhagen late next year.

In particular, he called for wider adoption of car emission standards and urged transport officials to consider how international transport can be included in a global emissions trading scheme. "Linking the transport sector to an existing emissions trading scheme would allow for cost-effective reductions of GHG emissions across sectoral borders," he said.

He also urged the industry to develop emissions measurement and reporting standards as a means of better assessing the sector's environmental impact. "We cannot master what we cannot measure," he said. "Developing a table of indicators for transport and climate change, as input to the UN climate change process, would be the task of the community of international transport experts. "