Asia and the Pacific are currently responsible for over 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The region is also highly vulnerable to extreme weather and related disasters, with annual losses estimated at $675 billion and disproportionate impacts on women, poor and vulnerable populations, people with disabilities, the elderly, and young people.  

Transport-related global greenhouse gas emissions in the region are approximately 31%. The road transport sector is still the top contributor to CO₂ emissions in the region with freight transport playing a dominant role.

Heavy duty vehicles account for 35% of transport CO₂ emissions while light duty vehicles account for 27%.  Accelerating transport decarbonization is crucial to the march towards net zero carbon emissions.

The region should work together to create an enabling environment that attracts public and private investment in revenue-generating climate projects, generate knowledge, and promote innovations and technologies to help decarbonize the sector and build climate resilient transport infrastructure.

To address these issues, the region needs to take the following actions:

Promote strategic and programmatic solutions. Rather than focusing on individual transport projects that insufficiently tackle the climate issues they generate, we need long-term engagement between countries and partners that address climate change.

This can be done by providing upstream, midstream, and downstream support, including policy and institutional environment strengthening, to address climate change; embedding climate change in systems for fiscal planning and building processes; and strategically financing projects and programs that meet the climate agenda.

Support a fundamental shift. Countries in the region must improve their policy and institutional environments for addressing climate change in transport.  This can be done through the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework, which comprises the core of how to reduce carbon emissions in transport.

It is also vital to incorporate climate resilience into transport infrastructure, such as through design, as well as connectivity that enables vulnerable communities to thrive despite climate impact, or lowering emissions by encouraging low carbon vehicles and reducing traffic volume. This requires an integrated, multi-sectoral approach leveraging expertise and skills beyond transport.

Promote technological innovations. We cannot address climate challenges solely through traditional technologies, systems, and approaches. Countries in the region and their development partners should continue to identify effective, innovative methods and technologies and demonstrate these to increase confidence and uptake, using knowledge exchange between members where possible. 

 Electric mobility is the transforming agent for a massive change to low or zero carbon emissions. We’ve seen this in the People’s Republic of China through its campaign in the use of electric buses and lessons learned. Today, as electric mobility costs have fallen dramatically, the focus of public financing is to provide charging infrastructure and spur private sector investments in electric vehicles. 

Mobilize private sector financing. To achieve a global transition towards net zero, clean energy or transport investments need to increase three to seven-fold in emerging and developing economies. The private sector can boost finance to the required scale by contributing know-how and efficiency. 

To meet the climate challenge, we need to partner with the private sector in projects supporting e-mobility and bundling with solar and wind, help in project design to generate development impact, manage donor trust funds to ensure projects are financially viable, as well as to mitigate risks and provide technical assistance to boost sponsor experience and capability. 

 The transport sector has great potential across sectors to focus on low carbon emission projects and ensure that climate-vulnerable populations are not left out. The speed of transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs) depends on national policies and the market development of EVs. 

The region needs to work together to create an enabling environment that attracts public and private investment in revenue-generating climate projects, generate knowledge, and promote innovation and technologies to help decarbonize the sector and build climate resilient transport infrastructure.