Turning the Right Corner

Book excerpt: Transport provides access to public services for the poor, opens up trade opportunities, and maximizes the benefits of urbanization: the mobility of people and goods drives development. So how can we protect the role of transport in times of scarcer fuels, costly and harmful carbon emissions, and the rising threat of extreme weather events? This is the central question that this book seeks to answer. Turning the Right Corner: Ensuring Development through a Low-Carbon Transport Sector finds that adopting new vehicle technologies and alternative fuels will not be enough to curb greenhouse gas emissions from transport: new patterns of mobility will also be needed. In developing countries where past infrastructure investments have not yet locked in particular transport modes, there is an opportunity to contain emissions by harnessing low-emission modes of transport. The book argues that the transition to low-carbon mobility is not only urgently needed if economies are to avoid becoming locked into high-carbon growth, but is also affordable. It outlines how countries can combine policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with broader sector reforms that generate new fiscal resources to finance the transition in addition to carbon financing and international assistance. Turning the Right Corner: Ensuring Development through a Low-Carbon Transport Sector will be of interest to policy makers, academics, and development practitioners with an interest in transport. It will help decision makers better understand how to contain the transport sector's contribution to climate change and protect transport infrastructure and services from severe weather events.