COVID-19 has turned our world upside down. In the mobility sector, the pandemic caused immediate and visible effects and in the long run, these changes will have lasting impact on regulation, technology and behavior.
Meanwhile, the burning issues haven’t gone away. Decarbonizing mobility is still an essential path toward achieving the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. Congestion, pollution, inaccessibility and rapid population growth in cities are still major challenges for urban mobility systems.
Renewable energy, electrification and digitalization offer huge prospects for the transport industry and have already brought urban mobility to the cusp of a radical transformation. What is needed now is city-business collaboration to continue steering these changes toward sustainability and efficiently implement new health and sanitation measures.
Change must happen at a system level. We need holistic approaches and we need alignment between different stakeholders.
Providing solutions for system change has always been an important part of our mission. As part of our Transforming Urban Mobility project, WBCSD joined forces with the City of Lisbon and leading companies, to launch the first-ever Corporate Mobility Pact – catalyzing corporate action to transform mobility. The Lisbon Corporate Mobility Pact (CMP) has since then gathered 84 signatories committed to implementing more than 444 mobility actions that would impact more than 100,000 people
The CMP mobilizes business leadership to accelerate the transformation of urban mobility. The pact aligns local corporate mobility policies and creates opportunities for joint action on issues such as electrification, shared mobility and space management. With the CMP in place, a dialogue between business and the city of Lisbon has been created, which is crucial for improving the local mobility system and for addressing the new challenges brought about by the pandemic.
The time to act is now
We must scale the success from Lisbon and replicate the CMP in other cities. The CMP represents an opportunity for business leaders to make their voices heard and show leadership in the transformation that is urgently needed. By establishing new platforms for public-private collaboration we can help make mobility more sustainable, safe and accessible for employees and city dwellers in a post-COVID world.
Join our webinar (7 July at 15:00 - 16:00 CEST) on corporate action related to mobility to learn how to set up a CMP in your city. Hear from and interact with the special advisor to the Deputy Mayor for the City of Lisbon, the Secretary General of BCSD Portugal, and the Global Sustainable Solutions Leader at Arcadis. Register now!
