The Bridging the Gap: A Deep Dive into NDCs and Transport Policy Landscapes in Low- and Middle-Income Asian Economies report embodies a comprehensive analysis that examines the alignment of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with national transport policies across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia-Pacific.
With the transport sector contributing significantly to global carbon emissions, the report reveals crucial gaps in policy integration, outlines emerging opportunities for low-carbon transport development, and highlights best practices for transitioning toward sustainable mobility in rapidly urbanizing regions. It calls to address several key areas to achieve meaningful progress in decarbonizing the transport sector. These include:
- Raising the bar towards more ambitious targets and measures for reducing transport sector emissions
- Integrating climate considerations into broader transport policies and aligning them with sustainable development goals
- Prioritizing the expansion and improvement of public transportation systems
- Promoting electric vehicles and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and internal combustion engine vehicles
- Strengthening transport adaptation and resilience to climate change impacts
- Addressing the growing emissions from freight transport
- Increasing the availability and accessibility of transport finance
- Building institutional capacity and technical expertise for effective policy implementation
To supplement the report are a set of "Transport and Climate Profiles" for 24 LMICs in Asia-Pacific which contain insights both in terms of transport and climate-relevant indicators, as well as insights related to polices.
This report, and the profiles. are part of the research work entitled “Transport NDC Gap Analysis for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) in Asia and the Pacific,” which is implemented, and builds on the work of the Asian Transport Outlook (ATO), a project initiated and supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). ATO is also being supported by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). ATO serves as the monitoring mechanism for the Aichi 2030 Declaration on Environmentally Sustainable Transport – Making Transport in Asia Sustainable (2021-2030) which has been adopted by participating countries to the Regional Environmentally Sustainable Transport Forum in Asia as organized by the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD)-DSDG/UN DESA.
The research is being co-funded by UKAID through the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) under the High-Volume Transport (HVT) Applied Research Program managed by DT Global International Development UK LTD (DT Global). The research is being implemented under HVT057 (Transport Decarbonisation Index) whose lead research supplier is the Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport. The HVT Programme is a seven-year, £18 million investment by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) to undertake research into the complex and interrelated issues of sustainable transport development across Africa and South Asia.