According to the International Energy Agency, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are expected to increase by 120% from 2000 to 2050, largely as a result of a projected three-fold increase in the number of cars worldwide. Without major changes in urban development investments and policy —especially in fast developing countries like China and Brazil—transport emissions are projected to skyrocket, jeopardizing any attempts to stay within a two-degree warming scenario. Beyond greenhouse gases, many transportation system indicators have been moving in the wrong direction, with increasing air pollution, road crash deaths, congestion, and time and money wasted on inefficient mobility.
ITDP has long advocated at the international level to strengthen political will to address climate change, accelerate sustainable development, and increase development finance for low-carbon and equitable transport. In decades of work at the international policy level, ITDP has leveraged hundreds of billions of dollars away from building more roads and towards transport, cycling, and walking infrastructure in the Global South. ITDP’s work focuses on implementing and strengthening the Paris Agreement, the continued development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and its system of indicators, and preparations for marking the 10-year anniversary of the $175 billion commitment to sustainable transport from the multilateral development banks (MDBs) at the Rio+20 Conference in 2012.