This series支持的,沃尔沃的研究和教育ional Foundations, discusses walking and cycling in cities with a special focus on low- and middle-income countries.

Walking and cycling are getting more and more attention in wealthy cities, as ideas about pedestrianization and safer street designs grow in popularity. Walking and cyclingproduce the least pollutionof any urban transport mode,foster health benefits,decrease traffic congestion, and can helpaddress traffic safetyby protecting vulnerable users. But in many of the fastest growing cities in the world, people walk or bicycle out of necessity.

Walking and cycling levels inlow- and middle-income countriesare on par with or surpass those of public transport. In most Latin American cities, walking and cycling comprise30 to 40 percent of all trips. Some 2.5 billion people are expected to be added to cities by 2050, most in low- and middle-income countries. Chances are, many millions more will walk or cycle to their homes, jobs and friends every day in the years ahead.

Yet there is a mixed record of addressing these important modes of transport in global development agendas.

TheNew Urban Agenda, launched at the Habitat III summit last year, mentions walking and cycling 10 times – a welcome change compared to previous iterations, which mentioned them just once. But there is no direct reference to them in theSustainable Development Goals(SDGs) and only passing reference in climate targets and other major global policy agreements. Despite this, governments interested in the benefits of urban walking and cycling will find they fit well under several existing elements of the global agenda.

The Sustainable Development Goals

There are clear ways that supporting walking and cycling contributes to development objectives. The SDGs contain two goals that primarily relate to walking and bicycling:Goal 3, to foster good health and well-being; andGoal 11, to provide sustainable cities and communities, as well as connections to sustainable infrastructure, gender and climate change.

For example, safety of pedestrian and cyclists will be necessary to meet the road safety target to halve road deaths, and walking and cycling also provide an easy form of physical activity that positively contributes to health.

Providing safe public spaces that are accessible to all will entail making cities bicycle and walking friendly, and these modes have a clear connection to addressing climate change.

Additional connections can be inferred through goals for sustainable infrastructure and climate change.

The New Urban Agenda

TheNew Urban Agendais theoutcome documentagreed on at theHabitat IIIconference in Quito, Ecuador in 2016. It is expected to guide urban policy for countries, cities, international development funders, UN programs and civil society for the next 20 years.

Contrary to the outcome of the previous two Habitat agendas in1976and1996, which mention cyclingjust a single time, the New Urban Agenda mentions cycling five times and walking or pedestrians an additional five times.Citiscopefurther notes that unlike in the SDGs, cycling and walking are “explicitly promoted and implicitly encouraged through an overall emphasis on human-scale and people-centered planning.” This includes fostering road safety, particularly for school children, encouraging accessible public space for walking and cycling, and supporting sustainable mobility that explicitly includes walking and cycling.

The Paris Agreement and More

In addition, promotion of safe walking and cycling are significant aspects of other global efforts, such as theGlobal Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseasesand theUN Decade of Action on Road Safety.

There’s also theParis Agreementand potential for more climate connections. Although the agreement itself does not specifically reference transport, countries have committed toNationally Determined Contributions(NDCs) that indicate what they will do to meet global emissions targets. Areview by SLoCaT到目前为止发现74%的国防委员会提交mention urban transport, though only 14 percent specifically reference walking and cycling.

Getting to Action

Clearly, there is more attention than ever to walking and cycling, even if it’s sometimes somewhat hidden. A 2016UN Environment Programme reportthat surveyed walking and cycling issues and policies in 25 low- to middle-income countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America found that most had a policy at some level intended to give walking and cycling more attention. But it also found that commitments varied widely from “relatively insubstantial” sections in a general transport or mobility policy to “standalone national walking and cycling policies.”

Mere mention of walking and cycling in a document does not make for real progress for commuters and residents and businesses.

The UN Environment Programme report recommends countries draft and implement national and local policies, dedicate at least 20 percent of transport budgets to walking and cycling infrastructure, gather better data, and address concerns of key users such as women, children and the elderly. Overall, they recommend cities and national governments give walking and cycling equal status to that of private cars.

Though a higher profile in the SDGs would have been welcome, the global agenda contains more to support walking and cycling than any other time. As this year’sclimate conference showed, the emphasis for many global development agendas is now shifting from commitment to action, and the same is true for walking and cycling. It will likely require country and city-level actors to take charge and emphasize walking and cycling in planning and budgeting.

Ben Welleis a Senior Associate for Urban Mobility at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.

Nikita Lukeis a Sustainable Transportation Intern with the Health and Road Safety Program in Washington, D.C.