For the transport sector to truly transform, it will need to attain environmental sustainability, social sustainability, and economic sustainability.
On the 10th day of the recently concluded 26th Conference of Parties (COP) to United Nation Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), transport was the key agenda on the table. The sector is reported to contribute around 25 percent to global GHG emissions. At COP26, various nations, cities, automobile companies, financial institutions, and other key stakeholders have signed the COP26 Declaration on Transport that seeks to align the sector’s activities to maintain the 1.5-degree threshold.
The Declaration and the COP26 event envisages to expedite a transition to electric vehicles and phase out the sale of all fossil fuel-based vehicles by 2040, with leading automobile nations to achieve the same by 2035. However, there are a few glitches and limitations in the pursuit of these objectives.
First, the top two automobile companies and top three leading automobile markets of US, Germany, and China have not signed the declaration leading to a significant chunk of the source of carbon emissions out of its purview.
Second, many experts and environmental activists have expressed their concerns on the COP’s event and transport declaration, in particular, on being too centric around e-mobility, which they view as an elitist proposition which is not socio-economically inclusive in its ambit.
Third, several climate activists have also expressed their displeasure with the focus of COP26 still around announcements and pledges when the science is clear on the need for immediate and concrete action.
Finally, although the summit enshrines critical and carbon-intensive sub-segments of the sector like aviation and shipping, it fails to make any considerable mention of some of the crucial elements of a sustainable mobility ecosystem including active transport, public transport, and non-motorised means of transportation like walking and cycling.
The Declaration and the COP26 event envisages to expedite a transition to electric vehicles and phase out the sale of all fossil fuel-based vehicles by 2040, with leading automobile nations to achieve the same by 2035.
These issues point to a policy-level challenge in the way ‘sustainable transportation’ is perceived by policymakers and key influencers as well as in the way such perception creeps into the policies, practices, and plans to promote sustainability in the transport ecosystem. EVs, when pitched as a solution that can solve all the pending structural issues of the sector, overestimates the potential of EVs in dealing with such issues as well as overlooks the much crucial role it can play in certain segments like 2W and 3W.
It is arguably true that sustainable transportation has become analogous to electric mobility in the policy parlance of various nations, which is a worrying development. The underlying challenge here is that an e-mobility transition is just one of the elements of a larger systemic change which is required to enable a climate-friendly, socio-environmentally sustainable and resilient transport ecosystem. As many experts have been echoing, for an effective climate action, we don’t need only a transition but a systemic transformation of the entire mobility ecosystem. This implies that having every new vehicle as an electric vehicle and gradually phasing out internal combustion engine-based vehicles from the road will not suffice.
The fact is that the entire transport system is highly overwhelmed with structural issues. Traffic congestion, travel time, quality of infrastructure, affordability of commutation, accessibility, inclusivity of transport solutions, amongst others are at the core of this sector. These will remain in place even if the entire vehicle fleet is electrified. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that a complete transformation of the transport system is envisaged and realised.
To achieve a truly sustainable transport system, it is extremely critical to adopt a holistic approach of strategising, planning, and implementing policy-based solutions. This implies that the entire transport system is clearly understood and hence, addressed accordingly from a sustainability point of view. For instance, the vehicles on road, transport infrastructure in road, rail, air, and waterways sector, automobile manufacturing, public transportation, markets, dealerships, shared transport service providers, repair and maintenance network, and other such elements form the entire transport ecosystem. In addition to these, the different types of commuters, active transportation through walking and cycling, logistics, and goods-based demand are other crucial elements of this ecosystem which needs to be considered while enabling a sustainability transformation.
The underlying challenge here is that an e-mobility transition is just one of the elements of a larger systemic change which is required to enable a climate-friendly, socio-environmentally sustainable and resilient transport ecosystem.
Additionally, a comprehensive framework and holistic approach towards exploring and understanding the concept of sustainability is indispensable to effective transformation of the transport sector. This implies that sustainability of the transport sector should not be construed as being the act of electrifying the vehicle fleet. It also includes making the transport system more inclusive for socio-economically marginalised groups and women, children, and old-age people. It should also imply making the system more climate resilient.
At a cursory level, sustainability can be viewed as being environmental, social, and economic in nature. Environmental sustainability includes not just mitigation of vehicular and other lifecycle emissions, but also climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation, control of various types of pollution, circular economy, and other environmentally-related facets of the entire transport system. Social sustainability implies that workers and communities dependent on transport sector for their lives and livelihoods are taken care of while undertaking any activity aimed at environmental sustainability like the electric mobility transition. Economic sustainability, broadly, implies that for all the stakeholders involved, developments in the transport sector are yielding ‘reasonable’ economic benefits. For consumers, it might be affordability, accessibility and of good quality of transport services. For the businesses and investors, it might entail in profits and return on investments. And for the state, it should ensure a steady flow of revenue. However, when this delicate balance is broken, someone’s greed makes stakeholders like consumers, especially economically weaker sections, to compromise on quality and go for the cheapest possible mode.
The low-income households in many parts of India spend a considerable amount of their income on public transportation which ranges from 10 percent, in some cases, to more than 35 percent. A truly sustainable transport will be one which achieves the environmental objectives of mitigating emissions by providing transportation facilities at prices which are lower and affordable for poor households.
In particular, for transforming the transportation sector in a sustainable manner, the guiding principles of ‘avoid, shift, improve’ can be adopted. ‘Avoid’ implies that to the extent possible, we need to incentivise people to avoid transportation. Future of work and digital revolution holds significant potential in reducing work-related travels, for instance. This improves the efficiency of the overall transport system. ‘Shift’ implies that for unavoidable commutation needs, the endeavour should be to shift to more efficient and sustainable means like walking, cycling, efficient public transportation like rail, amongst others. This will have a positive impact on the efficiency of each of the trips taken, which are unavoidable. And lastly, ‘improve’ implies undertaking a continuous process of implementing policies and plans for improving the vehicle efficiencies including efficiency norms, electrification of vehicle fleets, and integration of renewable or hydrogen-powered vehicles.
The endeavour should be to shift to more efficient and sustainable means like walking, cycling, efficient public transportation like rail, amongst others.
Other than such an approach, it is also worthwhile to note that any action for sustainability of transportation sector should be done in a participatory, bottom-up, and decentralised manner. Cities, as the key node of urbanisation and economic growth, will be crucial entities for sustainable transformation of the transportation sector as well. Capacities of local governments, city administration, gram panchayats are a crucial barrier in taking well-intended policies to the last mile. And transportation is one such essential requirement of this era, which is needed by almost everyone in some form or the other. Decentralised action, and a participatory approach needs to be adopted where the beneficiaries of transportation services are not just active listeners and receivers of policies, but also key decision-makers in planning and implementing the policies that affect them.
Therefore, to truly transform the transportation sector with the objective of making it more sustainable in its entirety, solutions and strategies beyond electric vehicles needs to be understood, calibrated, and adopted at global, national, sub-national, and decentralised units of governance.
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Sarthak Shukla is an Independent public policy consultant working on issues around sustainability inclusive economy and resilience
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