In 2015,the world embraced a vision for sustainable growth with the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).the SDGs declared that ‘business as usual’ can no longer deliver the future we need. A decade later, the Asia-Pacific region has made notable progress, but many of the SDGs remain off track to be achieved by 2030. Transport continues to hold immense potential to connect ambitions across the SDGs and shape a more inclusive and sustainable future up to and beyond this key date. as an enabler of development, it determines how people access opportunities, how goods move through economies and how societies interact with the surroundings.
Respectively,these economic,social and environmental dimensions form the three pillars of sustainable development,yet transport captures the paradox at the heart of this very agenda: it holds many of the solutions while producing some of the region’s greatest challenges. Nowhere is this clearer than in the numbers. Every year, 700,000 people in Asia and the Pacific die in road accidents, with over 98 per cent of these in low- and middle-income countries. A further 2.2 million people die prematurely due to air pollution, a stark reminder of a sector responsible for 23 per cent of global emissions, 41 per cent originating from Asia and the Pacific. Traffic congestion, meanwhile, leads to productivity losses equivalent to 2-5 per cent of GDP across asia, and up to 10 per cent in cities such as Beijing.
Evidently, there is a compelling human and economic case for sustainable transport, and placing it at the center of SDG implementation can unlock wider development gains. This becomes clear when looking at how transport links with the SDGs across several dimensions:
Catalyst for inclusive growth and decent work
reliable and affordable mobility systems are essential to reducing poverty (SDG 1) and promoting economic growth and decent work (SDG 8). In Jakarta, for example, the TransJakarta Bus rapid Transit (BRT) network moves more than one million passengers daily, cutting commute times by 30 per cent and saving low-income workers travel costs. in Nepal, the Department of Roads found that connecting major roads to rural communities made it easier for small farmers to transport their products to buyers and created millions of paid employment days fo
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