30 June 2007: Work under this progeam is at present being focused entirely on the New Mobilty Climate Emergency Prooect, that got underway in Februrary 2007.

Empty Chair in Kyoto Traffic accounts for more than half of all CO2 pollution threatening our cities. But none of this has as yet been targeted in the Kyoto Treaty. The Protocols have been signed by some 157 countries, but not one city. Yet 70% of all people live in cities and increasingly get about in them using motor vehicles which burn fossil fuels and contribute both to global warming and a wide array of local public health problems. This wide-open international collaborative program is being created to take direct aim at this challenge. It is very ambitious and proposes rigorous, open and checkable short-term performance targets at the level of each participating city. But as you will see if you check in here, there is a lot more to this than "just" Kyoto Compliance.

Kyoto World Cities - The 20/20 Emergency Program From the vantage of most cities however, climate change and the Kyoto Protocols are not very high on their list of priorities. Far more important for them is the stark reality of their mobility systems in crisis - too much traffic pouring in year after year, mounting pollution and public health problems, accidents, swelling subsidy costs, poorly served groups and areas, and the list goes on. Moreover, these problems are taking on threatening proportions at a time when most of the traditional transportation and policy models are proving themselves not only inadequate in the face of the challenges, but actually are calling for measures that threaten to make things substantially worse. Thus the second, and indeed for many cities around the world the more important part of this program is its potential to offer new ideas and new solutions at a time when the old ones are no longer doing the job. The Kyoto 20/20 Emergency Program.

Welcome to the New Mobility Agenda (A Factory of ideas for the move to sustainable cities.) Unconstrained by bureaucracy, economic interests or schedules, the New Mobility Agenda was launched in 1988 as a broad-based collegial internet platform for critical discussion, exchanges of materials, and diverse forms of cross-border collaboration on the challenging, necessarily conflicted topic of "sustainable transportation and social justice". Check out the Agenda's decade's long track record of new thinking and international collaboration to advance the sustainability agenda, of which the latest is the aggressive Kyoto World Cities 20/20 Challenge.
Collective Actions/Peer Support
The New Mobility Agenda has three main assets that allow us to get together at opportune moments to support outstanding international projects and initiatives: (a) a long-standing world wide network of highly knowledgeable committed peers with diverse backgrounds and points of view; (b) a strongly shared interest not only in improving physical movements but also in the sustainability and social justice agendas; and (c) an effective networking and communications medium. Read on to see how we are putting all this to work.


    Home Kyoto Site Map Working Groups The Bridge  Kyoto Blog   Contact
Site optimized for browsing with Explorer 5/6 and best viewed with resolution of 1024 x 768
The Commons has welcomed international visitors since 3 July 1995.
Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara 75006 Paris, France, Europe. T: +331 4326 1323
Copyright © 1994-2005 The Commons ® Last updated on 1 July 2006