Overview
Since the UN World Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, sustainable development is one of the guiding principles of the international community. The national strategy for Sustainable Development "Perspectives for Germany" sets guiding principles and management rules for a sustainable development and thus forms the basis of the national sustainability policy. Furthermore, a key set of sustainability indicators is included, which constitutes an important element of the monitoring progress towards a sustainable development. Transportation is one of the sectors with a major need for action. Its importance is shown by the fact that 11 out of the 38 indicators of the sustainability strategy already refer directly or indirectly to transport.
After over a decade of applying those key indicators, the task of the project consisted of reviewing their suitability. Hence the project aims at analysing the mobility indicators embedded in the national sustainability strategy regarding their efficiency and validity, therefore identifying the needed adjustments and enhancements.
Consequently, the first step was to identify the most important fields of action related to a sustainable mobility development. Then, potential indicators for the identified fields of actions were identified. This was followed by an evaluation of the identified indicators. Finally, a specific indicator recommendation was elaborated on based on this evaluation.
Funding
Results
Over all, the study considered the transport specific fields of action for the targets “Environmentally Friendly Transport” and “Guaranteeing Mobility”, as well as for the cross-sectional fields of action “Use of Energetic Resources”, “Climate Change”, “Air Quality” as well as “Noise”, “Land Consumption”, “Traffic Safety” and “Financial Sustainability”.
The fields of action “Guaranteeing Mobility” as well as “Environmentally Friendly Transport” describe the core tasks of a sustainable mobility development and illustrate the fundamental contradiction of transport activities: A high level of mobility should be guaranteed and negative environmental impacts need to be reduced at the same time. The necessary reduction of environmental impacts is addressed by the field of action “Environmentally Friendly Transport”, while the field of action “Guaranteeing Mobility” addresses the warranty of a minimum standard of mobility possibilities.
The fields of action “Use of energetic resources”, “Climate change”, “Air quality”, “Noise” as well as “Traffic safety”, “Land consumption” and “Financial sustainability” can be depicted by cross-sectoral indicators. In doing so, it is necessary to ensure that the contribution of transport is adequately included.
In the end, nine fields of action were identified and in each field, specific indicator proposals were developed.
Findings of the study are published in detail by a final report (German only) which is available online via the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety:
http://www.bmu.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Pools/Forschungsdatenbank/fkz_3713_12_102_mobilitaet_bf.pdf