“It’s amazing that this is the first time the lowest carbon form of transport has appeared at a major platform at COP,” England’s Active Travel Commissioner, Chris Boardman, told delegates today at the latest Council of Parties (COP), the annual global climate change meeting. COP29 is currently being staged in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“The reason it has been missing is that when you’re facing a gigantic global problem, [cycling] just seems so small and every day,” suggested Boardman.
“But that’s its superpower,” he added.
He was speaking at a panel discussion called “Active Travel: a people powered panacea?” organized by the U.K. government. Boardman was introduced by Mary Creagh, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or as she described herself, “the minister for nature.”
Creagh, the MP for Coventry, told the audience she had three bicycles and was always on the lookout for more.
Active Travel England is part of the U.K. government’s Department for Transport, and the panel discussion held in the U.K. pavilion in Baku highlighted the potential of active travel as a practical, low-cost, and immediately available decarbonization solution for the transport sector.
Boardman discussed the “wider, indirect and often unacknowledged impacts that may show [the] carbon saving potential [of active travel] is even greater than currently acknowledged.”
Boardman also acknowledged the irony of flying to a climate conference. “I’m constantly asked, have I ridden here?” he said. “No, I didn’t, but a group at the back here did; it took them five months to get here.”
Two hundred activists rode almost 4,000 miles from Paris to Baku to lobby for more action on cycling at COP29. The cyclists joined a coalition of cycling, walking and health groups in pushing for more significant commitments for active transport at COP. The Partnership for Active Travel and Health (PATH) members include the European Cycling Federation, Dutch Cycling Embassy and World Cycling Alliance as well as the United Nations Environment Program.
A statement from PATH said:
“Enabling more people to walk and cycle safely and to access public transport by foot and by bicycle can help cut transport emissions in half by 2030. Despite two-thirds of nations having active travel policies in place, there remains a pressing need for increased ambition, action, and investment in their climate commitments to fully unlock the benefits of walking and cycling.”
PATH evaluates countries on their Nationally Determined Contributions towards cycling and walking. These are commitments countries make to reduce their emissions as outlined in the global Paris Agreement on climate change.
