Posted on February, 05 2010

The ‘mobility revolution’ – our ability to travel almost anywhere in the world - has shaped the way we live, where and how we work, and how we spend our leisure time. Unfortunately, our increasing personal mobility has resulted in serious environmental impacts.

WWF's One Planet Mobility programme is creating solutions that will help reduce the need for travel and encourage a shift to more sustainable ways of making journeys. As part of this programme, starting this year, WWF will work with five European cities - Sofia, Barcelona, Malmö, Freiburg and Lille - to develop a vision for sustainable urban mobility.

“Transport continues to be a huge problem when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions in the EU”, says Georgi Stefanov, Climate Change Expert at WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme, Bulgaria. “If other sectors are taking measures and emissions are going down, this is not the case with transportation”, he adds.

On a global scale, personal mobility is responsible for around 25% of CO2 emissions. In Europe, the personal mobility sector – which includes cars, aviation and public transport (but excludes freight transport) – has the fastest growing energy demands of all sectors and, in most countries, is the only sector with consistently increasing emissions.

“The best thing is that Sofia’s Urban Mobility Centre is very motivated to implement the programme – they realize they have a great deal of problems to solve and they are actively looking for solutions”, says Georgi Stefanov.

The project will use a new software tool called REAP (Resource and Energy Analysis Programme) which is based on material flow analysis and carbon footprint to analyse the environmental impact of personal mobility on each partner city. This software will be used to explore alternative development scenarios for each city and then create a cohesive vision for sustainable mobility.

The development of the REAP methodology for the European countries and cities that collaborate in this project, offers huge opportunities at a national, regional and a local level. The REAP baseline does not only offer information about the footprint stemming from people’s use of cars, public transport and planes, but provides full information about the environmental impact from all consumption (like housing, food etc). Development of the REAP scenario manager helps to answer “What if” questions about the effects of policy on the environment and formulates strategies for local, regional and national government.

Mobility and wellbeing

Alongside the environmental impacts, the ‘mobility revolution’ has not always brought higher levels of well-being.

• The average commuter now spends 29 working days each year travelling to work – over a working life that could add up to more than five years of travel.
• Local air pollution and increasing noise levels also have a negative impact on physical and mental health.
• The economic costs of being so mobile – from the price of filling up with petrol to the high infrastructure costs – are significant.