25/11/2025
What is sustainable transport?
Transport is vital for promoting connectivity, trade, economic growth and employment. Yet it is also implicated as a significant source of green-house gas emissions. Resolving these trade-offs is essential to achieving sustainable transport and, through that, sustainable development.
In its 2016 report, the Secretary-General’s High-level Advisory Group defined sustainable transport as “the provision of services and infrastructure for the mobility of people and goods — advancing economic and social development to benefit today’s and future generations — in a manner that is safe, affordable, accessible, efficient, and resilient, while minimizing carbon and other emissions and environmental impacts.”
Sustainable transport is therefore not an end in itself, but a means to achieve sustainable development.
