Connections
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Connections is a weekly series of knowledge notes from the World Bank Group’s Transport & Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Global Practice. It covers projects, experiences, and front-line developments.
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Publication
ICT at COP21: Enormous Potential to Mitigate Emissions
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)The transformational potential of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) was on display in Paris at the Twenty-First Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. ICTs, including the Internet, mobile phones, geographic information systems (GIS), satellite imaging, remote sensing, and data analytics, could reduce yearly global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) 20 percent by 2030, thus holding them at their 2015 level. Moreover, ICT emissions are expected to decrease to 1.97 percent of the global total by 2030, from 2.3 percent in 2020, while emission reductions attributable to ICT will be nearly 10 times greater than those of the ICT sector. ICTs are also critical for climate change adaptation, providing vital tools for all phases of the disaster risk management cycle. Although the opportunities for ICTs to support the climate change agenda are enormous, much work remains in order to realize them. Governments of developing countries must be further encouraged to include ICTs in their national climate change policies. And the international development community will have to make significant efforts, particularly in low-income countries, to develop ICT infrastructure as well as the institutional capacities and skills to implement and sustain these solutions. -
Publication
Enhancing Road Resilience in Pacific Island Countries: World Bank Assisting Adaptation to Climate Change
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)Pacific island countries are experiencing higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and extreme weather that is increasingly frequent and intense. The resulting damage has likewise been extreme. Between 2012 and 2015, for example, losses from three cyclones ranged from 11 percent to 64 percent of GDP in Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu. In many of these countries, primary roads and critical infrastructure are adjacent to the coast, and the majority of the population lives within 1 kilometer of the sea. Expected climate change effects will place coastal assets and communities at a higher level of risk. Governments are well aware of these challenges. Today, more than one-fourth of the World Bank’s transport commitments support mitigation and adaptation to climate change (a share that is growing), and its work with Pacific island countries is one of the ways it is responding to the rising demand for climate action. The demand from Pacific island countries in recent years has focused on road resilience, and early lessons will provide a strong basis for further progress. -
Publication
Transport at COP21: Part of the Climate Change Solution
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)The case for climate action has never been stronger. Around the world, climate change is putting at risk the lives of millions of people as well as threatening many coastal cities and endangering trillion of dollars of investments in transport infrastructure and services. The Twenty-First Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will bring heads of state and ministers to Paris at the end of November to reach a global climate agreement with far-reaching implications for low-carbon and climate-resilient growth. Transport is playing a greater role in COP21 than in past UNFCCC conferences as a critical part of the solution: a sector that can contribute to both reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and building economy wide resilience to the impacts of climate change. In view of the sector’s potential, the heavily debated transport question is how to sustainably meet the rising global demand for greater interconnectedness and mobility. The World Bank and the seven other leading multilateral development banks have joined forces with the Paris Process for Mobility and Climate (PPMC) and the rest of the transport community to call for more action on transport and climate change. -
Publication
More Climate Finance for Sustainable Transport
( 2015-05)Actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to stabilize warming at 2 degree Celsius, as agreed by the international community in 2009, will fall short if they do not include the transport sector. Transport is responsible for around 23 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and emissions are expected to rise without further action to curb emission growth and invest in low carbon transport modes. Investment needs are estimated at around $3 trillion to increase the sustainability of existing and new transport systems and to mitigate climate change over the 2015-35 periods. This is in addition to existing annual investments estimated at $1-2 trillion. The actions taken today to send the right policy signals, and establish the enabling institutions and regulations to attract the necessary private finance will be critical to support this transformation. Significant investment opportunities exist in public transport systems, vehicle efficiency improvement, and reducing the need for travel through demand management, regional development policies, and land use planning. As the international community embarks on the road towards CoP 21 in Paris, there is a case to be made for more climate finance flowing towards transport. -
Publication
Reducing Greenhouse Gases: GHG Analysis in Transport
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-03)World Bank is applying to transport initiatives a new and distinctive method of greenhouse gas (GHG) analysis as part of its comprehensive GHG accounting policy. In transport, choices by travelers determine usage, and a fundamental trend in much of the world is strongly boosting GHG emissions: the massive rise in motorization as household incomes and technical advances make it affordable. This tendency will push transport fuel emissions much higher unless projects sharply expand the opportunities and incentives for users to adopt low-emission modes. The World Bank’s GHG analysis for transport shows whether a given transport project can help lower the trajectory of the sector’s GHG emissions. A central feature is an estimate of the wider social costs of emissions under various modes, for example, air pollution and accidents, as well as climate change. Including them greatly increases the demonstrated benefit of emissions reducing projects and thus will also help accelerate the move to a sustainable transport sector. -
Publication
The Broad Reach of Green Design: Incorporating Environmental Sustainability in Aviation Facilities
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-02)A World Bank series of projects to improve aviation operations in four Pacific island countries is demonstrating that the concept of ‘green design’ goes beyond energy efficiency to the wider goal of environmental sustainability. The aviation program is reducing impacts on a broad spectrum of concerns, including solid waste management and water quality, by designing with the full lifecycle of all project assets in mind. -
Publication
Want to Keep Tourists Away? Keep Flying Solo: A Lesson from Small Caribbean Ctates
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-12)The island states of the eastern Caribbean are wastefully competing with each other for the lucrative, yet stagnant, stay-over tourist trade by ‘flying solo’: separately building long-haul airports and agreeing to expensive bilateral subsidy deals with airlines.1 Instead, they could vastly increase their tourist revenue and lower their costs through collaboration to remove barriers to inter-island travel. The linchpin of such joint efforts will be a hub-and spoke airline system that funnels stay-over tourists to the edge of the region and then allows them to easily fly to their final destination.