Future of transport
European Commission Transport

In 2001, the Commission issued a White Paper setting an agenda for the European transport policy throughout 2010. Approaching the end of the ten-year period, it is time to look further ahead and define a vision for the future of transport and mobility, preparing the ground for later policy developments.

The importance of decoupling between freight transport and economic growth
MJ.Verny, Reims School of Management

In France and Europe, mobility and economic activity have developed with the same growth rate for several decades. This trend has to be prolonged with short – medium terms. The correlation observed between transport demand, in particular of goods, and economic growth throws light on the concepts of coupling / uncoupling which have been proposed in literature for a few years. In September 2001, the decoupling notion leaves the narrow world of the economists of transport where it had appeared a few years earlier, to be revealed with a widened public, with the favour of the publication of the European Commission’s white paper « European transport policy for 2010: time to decide ». Here, the coupling means that freight transport demand is correlated with economic growth. This perception permits to analyse underlying freight transport logics and to suggest different means for reducing negative externalities.

The Decoupling of Road Freight Transport and Economic Growth Trends in the UK: An Exploratory Analysis
Pr. Alan C. McKinnon, Logistics Research Center, Edinburgh 2006.

For several decades there was a very close relationship between the growth of road freight movement in the UK (measured in tonne-kms) and economic growth. This relationship appears to have broken. Between 1997 and 2004, GDP increased in real terms in the UK by a fifth while the volume of road freight movement remained stable. This suggests that the long-awaited decoupling of economic and freight transport growth has begun, possibly leading to a new era of sustainable logistics. On the other hand, the decoupling represents a substantial loss of potential business to British road hauliers. Had the growth of freight movement by British-registered trucks paralleled the growth of the economy as a whole over this period, they would have carried an extra 21.4 billion tonne-km in 2005, equivalent to just over 3000 fully-laden trips per day by 44 tonne lorries between London and Edinburgh. Where has all this potential freight traffic gone?

Decoupling freight transport from GDP – conditions for a‘regime shift’s
Markku Lehtonen, Sussex Energy Group, University of Sussex.

Until recently, the volume of road freight transport has been expected to follow the growth of GDP and any policy aimed at curbing freight demand has been thought deleterious to economic development. However, recent studies indicate a ‘relative decoupling’ in some European countries, including the UK. These figures may be misleading, since they fail to take into account the increasing proportion of foreign haulers in the UK, and the increasing volume of imports in many industrial sectors. Moreover, a far more drastic system change – a transformation of the oil-dependent ‘socio-technical regime’ – will be needed to achieve the UK government’s goal of 60% reduction in CO2-emissions by 2050.

Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion - Turning territorial diversity into Strength.
European Commission. DG Regional Policy, 2008

The conclusions of the informal meeting of the EU ministers responsible for spatial planning and regional development (Leipzig, May 2007) invited the European Commission to "prepare a report on territorial cohesion by 2008". The Green Paper therefore launches a debate on territorial cohesion with a view to deepening the understanding both of the concept and of its implications for policy, cooperation and coordination.
[doc] [annex]

Aviation and the Global Atmosphere
UNEP, GRID Arendal: Environmental Knowledge for Change, 2002.

Models about the chemical compostion of the future atmosphere. This web-site contains the full text and graphics from five special reports by the IPCC's Working Groups. The reports were first released for COP 6 in The Hague, November 2000, and was prepared and published to web by GRID-Arendal in 2001.