Sustainable transportation initiatives in developing countries

The primary goal of the workshop was to share experiences of sustainable transport practices from invited medium-sized cities in Latin America and Asia. The purpose was to learn how sustainable mechanisms have been incorporated into national planning and implementation systems. Emphasis was given to understand what concrete mechanism work to promote sustainable transport in the selected projects.

The workshop included participation of transport economics and engineers, policy makers and policy-advisors, and key representatives from the transportation government and non-governmental sector in El Salvador. Among participants there were also members from academia, private consultants and international NGOs.

The workshop provided a basis for outreach in terms of directly informing participants on the specific experiences brought in by the participating countries. The Workshop set out to address the following main objectives: To demonstrate successful examples of transportation initiatives that show positive sustainable economic, environmental and social benefits in selected developing countries; To provide a forum for discussion of sustainable transport paths; To develop a network for information exchange and capacity building; To gather information on concrete mechanisms to promote sustainable transportation; To demonstrate efficient mechanisms and tools for collection and analysis of data in transport; To create an inventory of success stories and alternative visions for the future.

Several institutions collaborated in organising the event: the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG-Sri Lanka), The Peace and Development Research Group from Göteborg University and institutions within El Salvador: Centro Salvadeoreno de Tecnologia Apropiada (CESTA), and the Climate Change Communication office of the Ministry of Environment in Salvador.