Kyoto World Cities Challenge- Abstract

Despite the fact that the transport sector is responsible for at least half, often more, of all CO2 production in most cities of the world, there is no provision under the Kyoto Protocols to provide guidelines, mechanisms or incentives to attack these problems. Transport in cities was the "Empty Chair in Kyoto".

The Kyoto World Cities Challenge has been created as a cooperative sustainability with the support of the New Mobility Agenda of The Commons, to provide a platform of expert guidance and peer support for cities anywhere in the world wishing to address these problems, and in the process to move toward being "Kyoto Compliant" at a time when most are moving firmly in the opposite direction.

The three main pillars of this Open Society initiative are:

1. An aggressive program proposal for practical remedial action at the level of the city in a 20 month target period starting in 2005, supported by

2. A distinguished International Advisory Panel which brings together a high level group of recognized experts and leaders in the several fields being brought together here, and

3. A multi-level information and IP communications platform making state of the arts use of low cost high quality internet tools to knit the network and the interested cities together.