Making Individual Mobility Low Carbon and Sustainable

With rapid growth of urban areas, the demand for mobility is expected to grow manifold. If the current trends continue, a large part of urban mobility demand will be met by individual modes of transport i.e. cars and two-wheelers. While it is important to improve and enhance the mass mobility means, it is also important to reduce the energy, material and CO2 footprint of individual mobility modes. This track will discuss the challenges and solutions to making individual mobility low carbon and sustainable. The key issues to be deliberated in the track include: promoting sustainability approach across the entire value chain of sustainable mobility modes, improving energy efficiency of individual modes of transport and promoting electric mobility in passenger vehicle segment. Speakers from government, industry and international policy think tanks will address the audience and get involved in discussions to findings ways to reducing the environmental impact of individual modes of transportation.

Low Carbon Sustainable Mobility for All

Urban transport situation in many developing countries including India is heading towards a crisis. Lack of mobility options for a significant part of the population living in the cities raises the issues related to equity in our transport systems. An urgent need for providing adequate and quality choices for ‘Mobility for ALL’ is being recognized as a solution for our cities. Improving and enhancing the mass transport systems, non-motorized transport systems and the intermediate and informal transport systems are the key solutions that need to be adopted by the cities in the developing countries. This track will target to deliberate upon the sustainability approach required for urban mobility, the role of national policies and programs, the way to plan and improve mass transport and non-motorized transport systems, and the need for innovative urban mobility concepts and services. Speakers from government, academia, industry, and international policy think tanks will address the audience and get involved in discussions to findings ways to promote sustainable mobility in our cities.

Global Trends in Sustainable Production And Consumption with A Special Focus on Edible Oils

The major challenges facing this sector are to seek sustainability along the entire supply chain “from farm to fork” which can be achieved by way of creating sustainable and strong alliances of farmers with the processors ,conserving the respective oil belts diversity , developing standards of sustainability in collaboration with sustainable agriculture networks ,further increasing the stakeholders might be a probable solution for checking the price volatility existent in the market, The emerging new categories of oils like palm oil and olive oils also hold promising answer to the sustainability issues in the long run.

Learning from Green Growth Initiatives in Asia

The Asia Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS) Partnership will host a session on innovative initiatives that enable green growth. At this market-place style session, participants will interact with representatives from a number of Asian countries who will showcase experiences and best practices in designing and implementing LEDS and green growth policies and programs. There will be five country displays, each highlighting green growth policies and initiatives, key institutions, lessons learned, and a unique “featured initiative”. Participants will be divided into five groups – and will rotate among the five displays over the course of the session. Representatives from the five Asian countries, primarily Government officials, will present on the topic of their display and will then invite questions and engage in discussion with each group. Business card exchange is encouraged. Each participant group will rotate until everyone has visited all country displays.

Mindset of Green Growth

The change of mindset and behavior at all levels are essential in order to build resource-effiency and green growth. The session will address different approaches and angles to tackle green growth and focus on new modes of thinking and action. Session focus is in line with the aim of the international network “Culture/Futures – the transition to an Ecological Age”, which focuses on how mindset and behavior can be changed through new practices. Dr. Pachauri of TERI is global protector of the network, which is managed from Danish Cultural Institute in Copenhagen.

Thematic Consultation On Energy : Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Energy Future We Want for All

The consultation aims to facilitate an open dialogue with stakeholders on how energy may be appropriately integrated into a post-2015 global development agenda. In particular, it aims to:

• Contribute to an open dialogue on the role of energy in the post-2015 development agenda that includes relevant stakeholders from governments, businesses, youth, and civil society;
• Mobilize a wide range of stakeholders to build a shared vision on a set of priority areas and global energy goals that may be integrated within the post-2015 development agenda, building on past experiences and on-going processes and initiatives; and
• Feed the findings of the thematic consultation on energy into the post-2015 development agenda towards 2015 including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Governance and Management Challenges in Water Use Efficiency

More than 700 million people in 43 countries in the world presently live in water stressed conditions. The Water resource endowment and distribution across the world vary spatially and temporally. The problem of inequitable resource endowment is as much an issue as water scarcity. The variations in intra and inter regional vulnerabilities are often on account of geographical location, with greater runoffs in high latitudes and wet tropical region and lower runoffs in the mid – latitudes. Ironically, nearly two thirds of the world’s population resides in areas receiving only one –quarter of the world’s total annual rainfall.

Water resource endowment and water use efficiency determine the water security of the region. Resource use efficiency is a function of good governance. Indiscriminate use of water by stakeholders can be attributed to distorted sectoral policies such as irrigation subsidies, nil/low water tariffs, etc. Since many economic sectors are water dependent, inter-sectoral policy implications assume significance. Policies for interlinked sectors should be devised after evaluating sectoral implications in its entirety and this can be achieved only through good governance practices at micro, meso and macro levels for efficient management of natural resources.

Reducing Inequalities: A Sustainable Development Challenge.

Already a key component of sustainable development policies, the alleviation of inequalities within and between countries also stands as a policy goal, and deserves to take center stage of the Sustainable Development Goals, agreed during the Rio+20 Summit in 2012.

The track will be dedicated to the presentation and the discussion of the 2013 edition of A Planet for Life Series, edited by AFD, IDDRI and TERI. This volume represents a unique international initiative grounded on conceptual and strategic thinking, and – most importantly – empirical experiments, conducted on five continents and touching on multiple realities. This unprecedented collection of works proposes a solid empirical approach, rather than an ideological one, to inform future debate.

The case studies collected in this volume demonstrate the complexity of the new systems required to accommodate each country’s specific economic, political and cultural realities. These systems combine technical, financial, legal, fiscal and organizational elements with a great deal of applied expertise, and must be articulated within a clear, well-understood, growth- and job-generating development strategy. Inequality reduction does not occur by decree; neither does it automatically arise through economic growth, nor through policies that equalize incomes downward via blind taxing and spending. Inequality reduction involves a collaborative effort that must motivate all concerned parties, one that constitutes a genuine political and social innovation, and one that often runs counter to prevailing political and economic forces.

Improving long-distance passenger transport systems: Introducing High Speed Rail in India

Rapid economic growth and urbanization has led to an explosive increase in the demand for long-distance mobility in India. The current passenger transport systems for long-distance transport will not be able to support the high levels of transport demand in the future, thus calling for an urgent need to look at solutions for high capacity, energy efficient and state of the art passenger transport systems for the country. High speed rail systems offer a huge potential to offer high capacity and faster services for meeting the long-distance passenger transport needs. The high speed rails can change the way people travel in the country and provide an impetus to the economic growth. This track will focus on discussing various issues surrounding the introduction of high speed rail systems in India. Speakers from government, multilateral banks, research institutes, and infrastructure companies will deliberate on issues like the need for high speed rail mobility in India, nature and impact of high speed rail in other countries, international experience of funding High Speed Rail projects, regulatory and institutional challenges and the role of central and state governments in developing High Speed Rail projects.