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World mayors sign Joburg ecomobility declaration on climate change

12 October 2015

 

The mayors of several world cities represented at the ongoing 2015 EcoMobility World Festival in Sandton on Friday 9 October formally and officially declared their commitment to sustainable development and low carbon emissions as their contribution to the battle against climate change.

 

The mayors unveiled the Johannesburg Declaration on EcoMobility in Cities, which Executive Mayor Councillor Parks Tau will take to the Habitat 3 Conference in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, later this month and to the UN Climate Summit (COP21) in Paris, France, in December.

 

The mayors – Abel Ngwasoh Langsi of Bafut in Cameroon, Hong-mo Wu (deputy) of Kaohsiung in Taiwan, Cllr Tau of Johannesburg, William Triana of Bogota in Colombia, Bjorn Blondal of Reykjavik in Iceland and Martin Moyo of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe – were joined by Monika Zimmerman, Deputy Secretary-General of the Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and Cornie Huizenga, Secretary-General of the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLOCAT).

 

Gauteng MEC for Transport Ismail Vadi and the City of Johannesburg’s Member of the Mayoral Committee for Transport, Councillor Christine Walters, also attended. The mayors declared: “We commit to and urge all spheres of government to give their full support to the implementation of transport-related targets on road safety, air quality, energy efficiency and urban transport under the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals.

 

“We highlight the importance of COP21 in reaching an agreement on more inclusive and ambitious action on climate change. We want an inclusive, ambitious agreement that recognises and supports activities by all actors – in particular those by local and sub-national governments – to realise EcoMobility policies and programmes that help make our cities around the world better places to live in.”

 

Mayor Tau said local government leaders and international EcoMobility experts discussed and developed the declaration, affirming that no greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy would be successful without including low carbon urban transport solutions.

 

“I will be taking this declaration to the United Nations’ Climate Summit (COP 21) in December 2015 to convey the message that urban transport is key to addressing climate change. We cities are not going to Paris to say that climate change is a complex issue to solve. We are going there to table solutions,” he said.

 

“The transport sector is already responsible for 16% of the global greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for 27% of global energy consumption. A relevant and growing share of this comes from transport in urban areas. By 2050, two-thirds of the world population will live in cities. Without changing transport policies and patterns, most urban areas will continue to be major drivers of climate change, while pollution and congestion increase.”

 

The declaration focuses on:

  • Adopting urban mobility policies that replace car-centred cities with people-friendly ones;

  • Prioritising walking, cycling, public transport and shared mobility;

  • Creating equality between different modes of transport that have to share road spaces;

  • Investing in lower carbon and zero carbon energy vehicles;

  • Developing green urban freight policies;

  • Engaging residents, employers and all spheres of government on policies, regulation and measures to discourage the use of private vehicles; and

  • Employing monitoring and reporting mechanisms that measure efforts to introduce EcoMobility.

 

Zimmerman said ICLEI would widely share the declaration with cities and international players to gain broad support. The City of Kaohsiung in Taiwan was named as the host of the 2017 EcoMobility World Festival.

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