THE CLIMATE REVOLUTION MUST BE ACCESSIBLE – THIS FIGHT BELONGS TO DISABLED PEOPLE TOO

 Article by Hannah Dines, Extracts Reprinted from The Guardian ,  15 October 2019  . Picture – Disabled group being helped by caregivers. Reykjavik, Iceland. Thanks to Alamy. 

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has done work on gender equality, using “gender focal points”, people who assist in gender-related decisions about the climate. But there isn’t a list of representatives with disabilities, though the outcomes of climate change negotiations will disproportionately affect us. The Paris agreement makes clear its obligation to disability and human rights, but will people with disabilities actually be involved in the discussion?

Wanted: Crowd-Sourced Transportation Analysis (An open thread for collaborative tool building)

This is the second of a two-part article by Charles Komanoff, activist, energy-economist and policy analyst, looking at goals and tools for finding the right strategy for implementing some form of congesting charging measures in New York City’s crowded streets. He invites comment on his proposed “Balance Transportation Analyzer” tool.

Wanted: Crowd-Sourced Transportation Analysis

Op-Ed: What/who keeps holding back New Mobility reform in your city in 2018?

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From the editor’s desk: If you get it, New Mobility policy reform is a no-brainer in 2018. However, while the New Mobility Agenda is a great starting place, it is not going to get the job somehow miraculously done just because it is the only game in town when it comes to sustainable transport. There is plenty of competition for your thin wallet,  all that space on the street, and  especially for that space between our ears. We have a few potential sticking points here that need to be overcome first.

Let’s have a quick look. After some years of talking with cities, and working and observing in many different circumstances, here is my personal shortlist of the barriers most frequently encountered in trying to get innovative transportation reform programs off the ground, including even in cities that really do badly need a major mobility overhaul.

Why are we losing the sustainability wars? In transport, in cities, in our lives? Because we are . . .

Consider these irrefutable, unpleasant truths:

There may be successes and improvements in this project, in this  place, in this way, but when we look at the bottom line — i.e., the aggregate impact of our transport choices and actions on the planet  — it is clear that we (that’s the collective “we” including all of us who have in some way committed to or accepted this great responsiblity, this author certainly included) are failing, big time in this challene. And if we are frank with ourselves, we can see that this is quite simply because . . .

Post Velo-City 2017 Op-Ed: On the need to re-connect cycling discourses with its core values

–  Esther Anaya-Boig,  Doctoral researcher at Imperial College London

I have just returned from the latest Velo-city Global Cycling Summit organized this year in Arnhem-Nijmegen, The Netherlands. The best part of the conference experience for me was that it gave me an opportunity to catch up with so many old friends and making new ones who share my deep interest in cycling as a mobility form and as a social act.

I appreciate the hard work and good intentions of the many many people who have contributed and made this event possible. However upon considerable reflection on what I saw and heard during the three days of the conference and associated events, I would now like to share some views and reactions, with all due respect of course.

Archives: The struggle for local democracy in Malaysia

ac Dato’ Dr. Anwar Fazal

This is one of those special times for Malaysia when change and ideas are most  welcome. So there is hope and opportunity.  And it is one of those special times when change, even paradigm shifts are possible, and local governments given a new and more central place in the lives of our citizens. If we can together constructively, creatively and systematically build and add to the many promising initiatives , and if civic engagement leads an upsurge of citizen interest, we will surely see the emergence of an efficient, effective, equitable, democratic local government system in Malaysia that is socially, ecologically and economically sustainable.  And make a marked improvement in the quality of life of all Malaysians.
* Anwar Fazal, Penang. In Malaysiakini, 12 April 2001

Changing behavior, changing the world . . with four little words

Source: From the New Mobility Fine Arts Collection at https://www.facebook.com/NewMobilityArts/

Towards a New Mobility Agenda for Penang: October 2016

Penang Forum meeting

An open letter to Mr. Joshua Woo
Special Officer to Member of Parliament of Bukit Mertajam
Penang

Subject: – Commentary on your article appearing in the Penang Monthly October issue under the title “Better, Cheaper, Faster – Really?” – http://penangmonthly.com/better-cheaper-faster-really/

Malaysian scholar on Transport and Land Use comments on The Battle of Penang

SRS projects vs. Penang Forum call for new Transport Master Plan

Translated from Chinese interview of Ahmad Hilmy, transport and city planning scholar from the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which appeared in the China Press of August 13, 2016. Mr. Hilmi closes the interview by stating frankly his recommendation that “the government engage independent experts to study both the proposals by SRS and the NGOs, based on best scientific estimates of construction cost, acquisition cost, maintenance and operation cost, life cycle, opportunity costs and externalities, ridership, environmental and life quality impacts, cultural and heritage issues, impacts on vulnerable populations, etc., instead of keep on arguing.

For full background on the fast-growing struggle to create a sustainable transport system for Penang. we direct you to The NGO Challenge Dialogue at http://wp.me/p3GVVk-xJ. The picture is rather murky at first due to considerable obfuscation on the part of the current administration, but if you are interested please take the time to work your way down through that top right menu section also entitled NGO Challenge Dialogue. You make up your mind, and if you have any comments, corrections or suggestions these pages are entirely open.

Op-Ed: What/who keeps holding back New Mobility reform in your city in 2016?

If you get it, New Mobility policy reform is a no-brainer. However, while the New Mobility Agenda is a great starting place, it is not going to get the job somehow miraculously done just because it is the only game in town when it comes to sustainable transport. There is plenty of competition for your thin wallet,  all that space on the street, and  especially for that space between our ears. We have a few potential sticking points here that need to be overcome first.

Let’s have a quick look. After some years of talking with cities, and working and observing in many different circumstances, here is my personal shortlist of the barriers most frequently encountered in trying to get innovative transportation reform programs off the ground, including even in cities that really do badly need a major mobility overhaul.

And you may read this as a negative criticism of the various groups and interest mentioned here, but please that is not at all my intent.  Human beings and most organizations are notoriously change resistant, that is a key element of their survival strategy.  In this short essay is my intention simply to remind the reader of the most important tension points, so that we can have this in mind as we move ahead with the difficult task of finding allies for a new, better and fairer transportation system

– Eric Britton, Editor, World Streets

Moldova Challenge Dialogues: Getting around here

From: https://sustainablemoldova.wordpress.com/

We try to make this site a friendly and efficient way to get around in what is already a considerable body of materials and tools, and which will only continue to grow as the program moves ahead. Here is what we have done.

The keys to getting efficiently into the growing content of this site are basically two: (a) the top menu and (b) the left working menu. Let’s look at them in order:

The Penang NGO Challenge Dialogue

The goal of this section of the S/P supporting websites is to provide easy access to anyone from within Penang or beyond in order to get a clear understanding of what is going on in the at-times painful path of contradictory  and withheld information on the topic of how best to go about creating a sustainable, efficient and equitable mobility system for all in Penang. It works like this.

* BETTER * CHEAPER * FASTER Penang Transport Master Plan . Media release of 13 July 2015

Penang – A Sustainable Transport Primer for a Battle of Ideas

Introduction

In the coming weeks we are going to be presenting here coverage of a highly interesting public discussion of differences of perspectives, values and finally of interests, which have at its core the same concerns of World Streets and our readers: namely the challenges of sustainable development, sustainable transportation and the context of the politics of transport in cities.

But let’s not try to get into the interesting details and ongoing work in this first editorial; instead let’s see if we can present a quick canned history of this small South East Asian city that is facing some hard choices that are important for the immediate future but also for the long term. There is a lot of passion surrounding these issues and differences, so in this we shall do our best to maintain what our friends over at Wikipedia so deftly call, NPOV – a neutral point of view.

Is World Streets doing its job? (The Netherlands/UK)

* We asked 100 international experts for their views.  101 have responded.

World Streets needs to catch on before my feet get wet.

– Dirk van Dijl
Serial innovator
Founder City Car Club
Enterprise Britain
The Netherlands/UK
http://www.enterprisebritain.com
dirk@enterprisebritain.com

Question to members of Penang Transport Council reviewing and evaluating SRS master plan documents

ON CYCLING:

CYCLING: We have been exchanging in our several group fora in support of the Sustainable Penang project thoughts about plans and actions in favor of more, better and safer cycling for all in Penang. And of course by this we mean specifically cycling for day to day transport, cycling for men, women and children getting from their particular A to B in all parts of Penang. (though it will be interesting as well to know of their coverage of leisure and touring cycling, etc.)

So, against this background we respectfully ask the following  . . .

Feminism and Sustainable Development in the Ukraine

 

I have just received a term paper from Iryna Poliukhovych, an International MBA candidate from the Ukraine, studying on a joint Erasmus program in Poland and Paris, on the topic of “Feminism and Sustainable development in Ukraine”, presented for my graduate seminar on Sustainable Development, Economy and Democracy – http://sustain.ecoplan.org – at the Institut Supérieur de Gestion (Paris).  The report is available  for review and comment at  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B41h-Am2TpUHYXBsUTlNS29kTkk. To give you a taste for the rfull eport, below you will find  her comments on the history of the women’s movement in the Ukraine.

Towards Sustainable Transport in Malaysia – What we already knew in 2001 and are steadfastly ignoring today

The Consumer Association of Penang organized a National Seminar on Changing directions from 7-10 September 2001  in Penang, subsequent to which a report was published and we now make  freely available here in its entirety at https://goo.gl/kQVD0T. This is a remarkably prescient document which was largely ignored at the time despite the vigorous effort of the Consumers’ Association of Penang and others in the city’s lively civil society and NGOs.  Somehow neither Penang or the national government were prepared to devote time and resources to finding the path to sustainable transport in cities. (And they were not the only ones.)

IS WORLD STREETS DOING ITS JOB? (We asked 100 international experts for their views.)

And one hundred and one responded:

Some World Streets readers

Toward a New Mobility Agenda for Chisinau – First announcement

This project is based on a discussion put forward in the last weeks by Eric Britton, professor of Sustainable Development, Economy and Democracy at the Institut Supérieur de Gestion (Paris),  in exchanges with colleagues at the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), who agreed to look more closely into this as an eventual collaborative project, and to get things moving  who took contact with the Solved program as an eventual third partner. This note briefly introduces the project and the first two talking partners: The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe and the Solved Collaborative. We are actively searching groups and individuals who are interested in following and, better yet, in collaborating with and improving this ambitious international team project.