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SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY FOR ALL
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Let’s Hold the Ship Steady

 

Despite the unprecedented and evolving challenges attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, the five working groups established under the umbrella of Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) in January 2020 transitioned from fundamental discussions about work plan and process to facilitating deep-seated deliberations on substance.  Leveraging the burgeoning momentum to deliver on their respective commitments in January 2021, the workstreams seized the opportunity of the IX Virtual Consortium Meeting to take stock and update Members about their work–focusing on  progress since January 2020, and how the COVID-19 crisis dominated the issues under study.

Moderated by Colin Gourley (UK’s Department for International Development), the session showcased five lightning talks prepared by the working groups: (i) Susan Bornstein (World Bicycle Relief) on Piloting the Global Roadmap of Action in South Africa; (ii) Karla Gonzalez Carvajal (World Bank) on Implementing Sustainable Mobility in South Africa: A Gender Perspective; (iii) Aman Chitkara (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) on Policymaking to Enable Data Sharing for a Sustainable Urban Mobility System; (iv) Daniel Moser (Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative) on e-Mobility and Covid-19: Navigating the New Normal in e-Mobility; and (v) Clotilde Rossi Di Schio (Sustainable Energy for All) on Energy and Mobility.

With all five workstreams forging ahead with their workplan commitments, the session proved a timely opportunity for the workstreams to assemble a coherent narrative in light of the new normal. The session included particularly resonating messages.

  • Susan Bornstein highlighted South Africa’s low resilience to COVID-19 shocks in its transport sector. Susan announced that the GRA pilot would culminate in a COVID-19 compatible roadmap of action toward sustainable mobility for the country.
  • Karla Gonzalez Carvajal emphasized that the pandemic exposed long-standing gender imbalances in transport. A gender-focused pilot study was underway in South Africa which aimed to plug data and policy gaps.
  • Aman Chitkara underscored the importance of data-sharing frameworks for actionable policy guidance to enable sustainable urban mobility in a post-COVID-19 world, with the announcement of likely use-case scenarios in Columbia, Uganda, the UK and or either the BENELUX region.
  • Daniel Moser called attention to the increased policy uncertainty for e-mobility caused by the crisis. He also highlighted the emerging opportunities to activate long-term innovative trajectories and solutions that establish e-mobility as the building block for transport decarbonization.
  • Clotilde Rossi Di Schio wrapped up a thrilling session by underlining the COVID-19 impact on the transport and energy sectors. She outlined plans for a series of work packages over the latter half of 2020, each focused on a specific transport–energy related policy measure from the GRA.

Although these topics were selected prior to the COVID-19 crisis, they remain highly relevant, and SuM4All will continue to focus on core work, through its established working groups. Continue to visit the SuM4All website to keep pace with the most recent progress of the five working groups.

 

Story prepared by Gurpreet Singh Sehmi