Transport Can Help Propel World To Greener Future – UN
Shipping, airlines and road transport need to clean up their emissions and help drive governments towards policies to fight global warming, a top UN official said on Thursday.
– There can be no doubt that the transport sector will come under intense pressure and needs to dramatically change direction, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told a global transport ministerial gathering in Tokyo.
– Transport industries should no longer find themselves in the position of beggars for billions of taxpayer’s dollars. Instead, they need to come back into pole position of drivers of economic growth, through the production of smart and efficient cars, trains, ships and planes, he said.
Officials from 20 nations met Thursday in Japan to find ways to tackle global warming related to transport, which causes nearly one-quarter of carbon emissions but has partly evaded strict regulation.
De Boer Wednesday called for the creation of a ‘’platform’’ to compare developed countries efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so as to ensure “fair” national emissions reduction targets in a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.
De Boer said a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto pact, which around 190 countries aim to adopt at a key UN climate meeting in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18, must be “politically” ratifiable.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
