25 members of parliament (MPs) and senators from nine African countries gathered on 22nd November 2023 at the Climate Parliament, the first of three roundtables in partnership with HVT. The collaboration, designed to engage legislators from the global south, will enable HVT to understand their needs and to work with them to accelerate the uptake of research findings in their countries.
The legislators from Egypt, Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, were presented with two new projects, both devised to help developing economies avoid the high emission trajectories seen in the transport sector across the world. The first project, the Transport Decarbonisation Index (TDI), is a research study undertaken by the multi-stakeholder partnership SLOCAT and their partner Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI).
The study aims to assist low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa and South Asia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in surface transport by developing a diagnostic toolkit, the TDI. This tool will help assess a country’s preparedness to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, enabling comparisons with other nations and tracking long-term progress. The TDI will not only diagnose decarbonisation but also measure progress and indicate the need for more stringent carbon-reduction measures.
The second project, Improving Access to Climate Finance for Transport Projects in Low and Middle-Income Countries (ACF), aims to determine the scale of finance available for transport projects and to identify key barriers to accessing it. The research team, from the World Resources Institute (WRI) with their partners SLOCAT and the Vietnamese-German Transport Research Centre (VGTRC) will also engage with stakeholders on the international and local level to develop actionable, evidence-based recommendations for improving access to climate finance.
Links between the two projects will enable them to work in tandem. The TDI tool will help LMICs understand which measures are most effective in reducing their carbon emissions considering their specific socio-economic circumstances and the characteristics of their transport system. This tool, combined with the findings of the ACF project, will be fundamental in informing investment decisions and will allow countries to better access climate finance for transport projects.
The presentations were well received by the African MPs and senators. WRI and SLOCAT answered questions and gathered their feedback on what would be most beneficial for their countries and constituencies.
The Climate Parliament will organise a further two roundtables in 2024; one in spring to illustrate the primary findings and development of the TDI and ACF projects and one at the end of the year to discuss their final outputs.