Including climate change considerations in Latin American urban transport practices and policy agendas

Abstract

In this research we sought to understand how actors in urban transportation adopt climate change considerations into their work, including the techniques they use to address it, such as planning, design, analysis and advocacy in project planning and implementation. Through interviews with transportation practitioners at the World Bank, working in Latin America, we found that efforts to include climate change mitigation in the urban transportation policy agenda encountered major challenges such as lack of support for interventions that slow motorisation. In response, these transportation practitioners used relationships, expertise, advocacy and analysis to modify their practices to climate change concerns.

Keywords:

• climate change
• transportation policy
• transportation planning
• urban mass transit
• policy practice

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the World Bank and the Center for Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and three anonymous reviewers. Statements in this report do not reflect the official positions, or policies, of the World Bank or the Center for Global Metropolitan Studies. Errors in this report are the authors’. Carolyn McAndrews would like to thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars Program for its financial support.