LAND TRANSPORT MIGHT PEEP IN DURING COP15 DISCUSSIONS

Climate change and transport
Transportation plays an important role in a country like India with huge population and immense potential to grow. Climate change and its relation to transportation gains significance from the fact that it constitutes to about 14% of the Green House Gas emissions, [IPCC, 2004]. With 23% of total energy demand constituted to transportation it’s quite obvious that enough time goes into understanding and improving the present transportation structure. Even though the emissions due to land transport did not figure significantly in the Kyoto, a lot of hope lies in it finding a place at COP15. The private players are pressing really hard to tap this potential market.
Significance of Land Transport
The land transport has been neglected in the climate talks and much emphasis has been placed on the aviation sector and bunker fuels. But land transport is a major emitting sector and more vulnerable to climate change particularly in developing countries.
Better transportation
Better transportation practices are necessary in mitigating the CO2 emissions which promotes more public transport thereby reducing the individualistic emissions. It should also be accompanied by better parking services, ticketing systems, mass transit with increased frequency and access points.
Land transport and COP15
Not much interest has been shown in climate talks on land transport. COP15 should be a good platform for bringing up this into the discussions. Better land transportation should support all the pillars of the climate talks, mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology transfer. With opportunities abundant this could be an important thing to debated upon in COP15.
Adaptation
Climate change should have adverse affects on the present transportation structure and adaptation is highly necessary, without which it would result in severe loss of mobility, economy and livelihood of the people.
Mitigation
Mitigation measures are highly feasible with improved land transport settings. This should encourage more public transport and thereby lesser vehicular emissions. Without inclusion of transport, mitigation targets are hard to achieve.
Finance
Installation of good transportation settings can be accomplished only with enough finance. Financial transfer to developing countries in this regard is imperative. Diversion of investment from the aviation and bunker sector to land transport should be encouraged.
Technology
Improving the transportation sector requires for more technological developments and with it in place all the pillars of climate change could be met convincingly.
Opportunity
Any revolution in the transportation sector should become a booming industry and should provide jobs for millions of people. This should grow as a potential market for investment thereby bringing in a lot of green funds into countries like India.