 Okay, hello everybody and thank you for joining us. This is Brian Motherway saying hello from the headquarters of the International Energy Agency and it's a pleasure to welcome you all to today's webinar, Exploring the Social Impacts of Clean Transport Policies. This is the latest in our series of webinars on people-centered and inclusive clean energy transitions where we are exploring different aspects of some of the questions around clean energy that relate to people in terms of inclusivity, equality, jobs and skills, participation. All of the questions that are becoming increasingly important as we accelerate progress towards our net zero goals and our clean energy goals. And we think about how they impact on people's lives, how people participate in these transitions and how we can make policies more fair, more inclusive and better in terms of the social and economic outcomes for people around the world. And I'm delighted to say we have a really interesting webinar today with four excellent panelists bringing different perspectives from different parts of the world to a particularly important topic because we all experience the impacts of transport policies in one way or the other. And particularly as we see a lot of changes happening around the world now in relation to clean transport, whether it's public transport, electric vehicles, changes in infrastructure, we are all seeing our lives affected in different ways. And these are raising really interesting issues around how they're affecting different parts of society, whether it's the global north and global south issues, whether it's gender dimensions, whether there are income related effects. And what have we learned in terms of those effects but even more so, what have we learned in terms of making better policies so that we can improve those outcomes, particularly for the people who need better outcomes and need better access to mobility, better mobility, most of all. So I'm gonna go straight into hearing from four experts from around the world who are gonna bring very rich perspectives to that debate. I do want to say to you that we will be recording this session and putting it online and you'll find online on the IA website all of our recent webinars on these topics. You're very welcome to go and look back at all of those events on many other interesting topics as well as today's. So I'm gonna go straight first to our first speaker who is Karen Lucas, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Manchester. Karen, thank you very much for joining us. It's great to have you here today because you have a very long track record thinking about these issues on a global scale. So it's great to start with you and think about this global perspective and maybe you can maybe set the parameters a little bit for us and tell us a bit about what you see as when we talk about the social impacts of clean energy transport. What do you think are some of those social impacts and particularly how do you see them in a kind of a global north, global south framing? Over to you Karen, thank you. Okay, thank you very much and thank you for that introduction. So I'm going to try and keep it brief. It's a huge topic area. I think it's extremely important that you picked it up at the IA. It's of international importance. It has different ramifications thinking about clean energy transitions in the transport domain depending on where you're thinking about and also depending on who you are and what population group you are. So the whole issue around the social impacts is really important. I mean, obviously when we're talking about the green energy transitions in the transport sector we could be talking about a lot of different things. So we can be talking about the introduction of new technologies. We can be talking about things like electric potential and vehicle fleet. We could be talking about things, initiatives that have been undertaken around walking and cycling. We can be talking around a whole load of interventions that are around IT technologies and the journey planning and the introduction of mobility as a service. We can be talking about so many different things and all of them have got different implications particularly depending on the scale of those changes. But at the same time while we're introducing all of these new technologies we're also continuing with many of the infrastructures and services and technologies that have been the legacy of the last hunger if not more years. So we still have some very road dominated transport systems. We still have very heavy rail dominated transport systems in a lot of countries with quite poor maintenance issues in both of those cases but also still building lots of major, major new road schemes. We've got a whole lot of public transport initiatives that have come in everything from metro to light rail to bus rapid transit which we've got to consider in terms of these energy transitions. It's no good running bus rapid transit that's still relying on diesel engines if what you're doing is trying to rapidly transition into a clean energy environment but that's actually still being rolled out in a lot of African countries we have bus rapid transit that is still using those old technologies. So it's a huge, huge complex area. We've also got, I mean like our colleagues from India will tell you that we have systems whereby people are already the majority of the population are walking and yet actually that's done to great risk to their lives and their health and health and their wellbeing and their livelihoods and we don't actually consider that in fact huge, huge exceptions of the population are behaving in a sustainable mobility way and we're not helping much in the transport sector to maintain those behaviors. So it's a huge area and I won't go on and on and on about it. I think one of the primary things is that whatever we do in the future we really, really have to embed the idea of very strong and dominant social impact assessments social and distributional impacts assessments because everything that we do has a different impact on different sectors of the population whether you're talking about where we are in Manchester or whether you're talking about Delhi or whether you're talking about Colombia and talking about Bogota or whatever wherever you are in the world there is always going to be essentially an outcome from those transport interventions and that major social outcome is about who can benefit from them and who cannot and always and that's a distributional impact also a spatial distributional impact where benefit, where are we benefiting? Are we simply benefiting the centre of cities where we've already got good transport services and supplies? Or are we actually thinking about peripheral areas where we know that people are already socially disadvantaged but we try to change the balance in some way in terms of who is advantaged and who is not? And I'll go into some specific examples. And what we know is that the state or social groups are always disadvantaged. The lowest income populations almost never benefit from new interventions and new technologies and quite often they might even disbenefit from them. Their more likely goods might be made worse. So I just gave the example of pedestrians who might be walking alongside urban roads, for example. It might make their lives worse if what we do is speed up the traffic, make the road, right, reduce congestion. Actually, that environment more dangerous, more polluted for them. So this is the issue around what we think about. Particularly I think in the Goyal South there is a huge change of dimension in terms of this. So it's not just poverty, but for women, they're much more likely to be negatively impacted and not have access. And then also there is an age dimension. So if you're poor and you're female and you're old, then it's much worse. And it goes on for there are these intersectionalities about who is disadvantaged. Almost always what we're doing at the moment is advantaging the driver. So with new technologies, we're almost always thinking about electrification. We're almost always thinking about the driver. And in many, many countries, the driver represents about 20% of the population and that is an elite population. So what you're doing is promoting further elitism within the transport system through what you're doing to improve the environment and the technologies for the private vehicle. And so what we've got to do is we want to think up, sorry, I should also say, different activities are prioritised. So we often in transport, we think about the commute journey. But in fact, the statistics show the commute journey is actually in a minority in most cases and it's the social care journeys, the shopping journeys, the leisure journeys that what we see the non-mandatory tricks that are actually in the predominance in a lot of countries. And so we need to be thinking about where we're thinking about how we're promoting new technologies and new infrastructures. What about access for those other occupations? Yes, employment is of course important, but what about access to education, to healthcare, to leisure, to cultural activities, to shopping and so forth? And obviously, again, I'm generalising, but it's much different in and out. There's certainly context to thinking about a remote rural area or a suburban area. So that's a really, really big quick thing. So I think the social and digital impact assessment of what we're doing to look at situated in what the current context is and then thinking about how this new technology, this new clean transport technology will affect the current situation and will maybe change or not the trajectory of the people who can and can't access the transport system. That is what we need to be thinking about. So we need to be thinking about access to these new technologies. If we're going to electrify the fleet, who is really going to be able to get an electric car? In the UK, I am a professor in the university and I could not afford, on my income, even on that income, to buy an electric car if there wasn't even a whole load of other barriers. I wouldn't do that at the moment. So there is no such an issue around affordability, to access the new technologies. There's also ability to access them. So when we start going digital, we might buy certain populations a digitally excluded, particularly older people, but not just older people. People don't have access to digital technologies, so they can't participate in those digital services. We also need to think about the location of where we put things. We might have a bike sharing scheme, but it's banging the centre of the city where it's a hundred miles away from where people need to actually access that bike hub. And we also really need to make the link between the fact that people don't use transport for the sake of transport. They use it to do something else. And we've got a changing environment in terms of employment, so we could take advantage of the new technologies in terms of creating new jobs within the transport sector. But we've also got to be aware of the fact that things like AI are taking over jobs, particularly, for example, lower-paid jobs, which are often occupied by women, like ticket collectors at stations and so forth. So all of these things, all of these different things need to be considered if we're going to think about an inclusive, not just green, energy system. Are people centred and inclusive? And a little word inclusive is really important because transport is such an unequally distributed good already, and what we don't want to do is make that distribution worse and make it worse for the people who don't have access currently to look for the amount of society effectively. I'll stop there. Thank you, Karen, and you've raised a lot of interesting points that we'll pick up on some. And as you say, we're talking about a broad range of things that's hard to generalize, but when I hear you talk about some of the issues we need to address, if we want to be more inclusive, you've talked about some that I could consider working within the current paradigm. So if we're talking about EVs, how do we enhance access? And you've talked about some that are kind of a rethinking of the paradigm, like a shift away from focus on drivers to thinking more about walkers, which don't get a lot of space. So if we wanted to move towards a more inclusive transport policy modality, how much of it do you think is bringing equity and inclusiveness into the current paradigm? But how much of it do you think involves a fundamental rethink of how we do transport policy? Well, I think that really depends on where you are, because you can't necessarily have a fundamental rethink about transport if you're in Greater Manchester. You have so much infrastructure there already that you are really not going to be able to replace or change. So basically what you've got to think about is the fact that you're acting around the margins. And a lot of the things there are thinking about ways in which you can make what you've got already more inclusive in situations where maybe you've got more of a less developed and more of a sort of emerging transport and transport system or rural transport system. You have the chance to redress the balance and do something called the different. And I would agree with you and I think one of the massive things that we really need to do, and I said this earlier really, is to protect the people that are already without technology and without intervention, walking. Because they are. If you've got 80% of your population walking, you're already producing a sustainable urban mobility system. And your problem there is that you're not being them over, you're polluting them, you're not making that walking environment safe. So that is the focus. It's most important is to improve your walking environment and improve the way in which people are able to access with these, what we would call slow modes. And that would be, I mean, as I said, it's very situational specific for me to generalize, we could go country by country if we wanted to. And I would suggest that there isn't one size fits all and every country needs to start from where it is now. And think about how these new technologies and new interventions can enhance rather than trying to think that they can adopt a whole new system which we've often seen, but often systems promulgated as being appropriate. And then once they're in place, transferred from one place to another, they don't do the job. I could think of bus rapid transit as one example of that. Like some places, but it doesn't work in other places. So adopting technology without really, really investigating them as thought as their appropriateness and their, their social contribution within the context in which they're being introduced is, is one big thing that we could do as well. Yeah, I mean, and I think that point about, you know, understanding what the legacy and the lock in infrastructure is really important. And of course, that's physical infrastructure, but also cultural and how we think about transport, what we think of as formal. I think it's really interesting. Thank you, Karen. And let's turn that to a really important part of the social impact of the changes that are going on in transport, which relates to labor. And I'm pleased to welcome Ulka Kalkar, who's the director for climate of the World Resources Institute in India. And Ulka, thank you for joining us. And I'm pleased to bring you in because he works at the automotive sector in Tamil Nadu in particular. And so from a labor perspective, maybe you could tell us a bit about what are the, what are the implications for labor of the transition, particularly the transition that's going on from conventional combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles? Thanks very much, Brian. And I really appreciated Karen's remarks as well about the kinds of changes that are happening or need to happen at the front end, you know, which is the passengers, the commuters. For the last few years, we've been looking at what you might think of as the back end, which is the companies, the businesses, particularly the micro, small and medium enterprises that manufacture the components that go into electric vehicles. And while I fully share Karen's concern about not catering to four wheelers, in India, there's actually a thriving demand for two wheelers as well as three wheelers. And the three wheelers do act as some form of shared transport. So there is a very, there is a momentum, I think that you can see in the market over here. And Tamil Nadu, which is in the south of the country has one cluster of these MSMEs, as we call them, micro, small and medium enterprises that make the components and the motors for the electric vehicles. So we see three types of trends really, and they're only just emerging, they're just beginning to become apparent. One is that as this transition scales up from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles, some MSMEs or some supply chains are likely to become redundant. Others are likely to grow, but this pathway with re-skilling and re-employment is not obvious. So some of the MSMEs that are working in this region are already, because of various economic factors, market factors, labor factors, are already facing a lot of stress. For them, they are beginning to see the shift to EVs as a way of maybe reviving their business as a new market opportunity. Other MSMEs that are doing quite well are actually thinking of this as an opportunity to diversify their business. In addition to the industrial components, motors, that they already manufacture, they're looking at expanding it into the EV business. There are also other aspects. For example, there's a foundry cluster, and these foundries typically are iron foundries, but going forward with electric vehicles, which are lighter, there might be a need to shift to aluminum casting. So there are many kinds of changes that are happening. The second type of trend that we see or the second aspect of it is the workers themselves. So not the MSME owners, but the workers and the need to re-skill them. And here we see there will be a demand for more electrical, electronic components, more precision manufacturing, more ability to handle software, handle batteries, all of that. So there is going to be a need for highly-skilled workers and to develop a very large-scale EV training program. I'll be happy to talk more about this as we go along, but one of the initiatives where we are involved now with the support of the EV charitable foundation tries to do skilling or training at two levels. One is at the owner level, the business level, trying to create awareness about what this kind of shift might entail, the business opportunities that might arise. And the second is very specific technical skills on the design and assembly of motors and controllers. But going forward, there are also other types of skillings that will be required. For example, for those who will be driving electric vehicles, maybe driving electric buses, there's a big kind of initiative for electric freight trucks. So drivers will need training. Those who are responsible for servicing of these vehicles, particularly in rural, remote areas, that kind of training or skilling will be required. And then there's also growing concern about battery recycling. So people are worried on the one hand about EVIST and on the other hand, they're worried about the critical minerals for more batteries. So I think that that's something that is only beginning to be thought of. But the last point I'll make is really from the perspective of women, a gender perspective, which is there is a sense that the auto industry in India at least has not been a big employer of women. There's been some sense that there's a lot of large, heavy, mechanical, manual work involved and it's not been friendly to women. With EVIST, we find that there is actually an opportunity to hire more women because there is relatively less of this kind of heavy, mechanical, manual work. So some two wheeler companies in fact have women only assembly lines. Others are trying to actually train more women and hire more women. I'd be happy to talk about some of the targets and specific programs that these states have. But there is still a bias. There is still very much a reflection of underlying social norms and underlying structural inequities. So while we see opportunities and risks in all three of these layers, the MSME owners, the MSME workers and laborers and then specifically the women workers, I think each of these aspects will need deliberate attention and very conscious actions and programs to make sure that these opportunities are actually equitably distributed. Thanks. Thank you very much. Okay, it's really interesting and really to get that kind of local specific experience. And it's really interesting. I mean, it's clear from what you're saying that change is coming, but it's also clear that it affects different organizations and different communities in different ways. So I'd be interested in your views on what are the implications of all of that for policymakers? Right, I mean, I think the implications are many. I think for a lot of policymakers, this is something that is being seen as an opportunity to create new jobs, to diversify local regional economies and to also create new clean transport opportunities. So air pollution, for example, is a big, big concern in India, especially in this season. And if you look at the source apportionment studies of any major cities, like I'm in Bangalore, transport is a major contributor to emissions. So I think for all three of these reasons, environmental, social, and economic, there are definitely sort of, this is the priority for policymakers. But specifically, I think I would reflect, I would reiterate the kinds of observations that Karen made about the nature of commuting in India and how, for example, even if you look at it from a gendered perspective, there's a recent survey that the Azim Premji University brought out on state of working India. And they found that women tend to use public transport or walk to their workforce. And this limits the distance to the workplace, right? This limits how much distance they can travel. But as the distance to the workplace does increase, men tend to switch to auto, to mechanize transport, to two wheelers, they're able to purchase one. While women continue to use public transport. So this has a lot of implications. And one of the recent schemes that the state government of Karnataka announced was to have free bus ridership for women. And there are also other types. There are always political choices to be made. Is this seen as a popular scheme? What does it mean for the fact that in any case, the government here is subsidizing the bus agency. But it has had incredible impacts in terms of the numbers of women who are riding buses and not just for work, but also for leisure. So just the empowerment of women, I think this has been a very, very interesting case study, something to learn from. Another type of policy is that around finance and credit. Because if we want some of these types of opportunities to be realized, we need to make sure that there is access to institutional credit. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, there is a scheme for small loans for electric rickshaws, electric three wheelers. And that is also the kind of policy that would be required. It may not have been always thought of as a transport sector policy, not something that affects the mutas directly. But these are the different types of policies that would be required. And finally, I would say things like around training of servicing. In India, there is an entire ecosystem. And when Karen spoke about the existing infrastructure, well, also in a developing country, there is an existing infrastructure. For example, there is a reliance on roadside mechanics who are trained to deal with parts of the internal combustion engine vehicles. They have to be retrained. There is an entire infrastructure of gas stations of petrol pumps, as we call them over here. That has to be supplemented by electric charging. So I think there are very quickly implications for urban design as well. And so all these types of policies, the transport sector policies, financing policies, air pollution related policies, and also skilling and urban design land use policies, all of these that are implications. OK, thank you. That's great. Really great. Thank you very much. Let's turn now to Rachel Montcrest, who's the Acting Executive Director of the International Council on Clean Transportation. Rachel, thanks for joining us. And the ICCG does a really interesting work on a lot of topics. But I thought we might start with low emission zones in cities because this is a topic that is quite topical. In many parts, how can we reduce air pollution in cities? How can we enhance mobility for communities in cities? But of course, it can be quite divisive in terms of people's reactions to these measures. And this is something you've been researching quite a bit. So could I ask you maybe to say a bit about your research on this topic in terms of how these kinds of policies can be designed progressively so that they don't disproportionately impact certain segments of the population? Great. Thank you, Brian. Yeah, and thanks so much for the introduction. So just really quickly on ICCT, so you can kind of understand where I'm coming from. You know, we're a very emission-focused organization with the objective of reducing or ideally eventually eliminating the climate and health impacts globally from the transportation sector, all modes. And we really, our focus is mostly on influencing government sort of interventions, policies, regulations, fiscal measures, et cetera. And I would say I've been doing this for a number of years and more and more and more over the years, we really have been making sure that we're having this equity component like embedded in all the policy work and regulations and everything that we do. It's so important, you can't just, even though ideally anything to improve emissions, it's gonna have a good impact across the world, but we across people, but we really wanna make sure that we're looking at the policy design in a lot more detail to make sure that, no one's badly influenced by these rules. So in the area of low emission zone specifically, we've done a lot of work to look at what's happening with emissions in cities. I would say if you go on our website, you can see like lots of reports about, we tend to do a lot of like measurements of real world emissions in cities. We use a technology called remote sensing sometimes and subsequent analysis. So basically we're able to understand pretty detailed which vehicles are creating which emissions and where they are emitting within the city. So when you have that level of detail, that really gives you a good foundation for designing good policy because you can't design good policy without good data. And what the low emission zones are typically trying to do is to remove the highest emitting vehicles from the city and kind of continue, continue, continue cracking down until obviously eventually we have all, zero emission vehicles in the city. So that's what we're trying to do. And so again, since the objective here is to improve air quality from transportation in cities, first thing we know and I think this has already sort of come up in the conversation is that air quality even in cities is not distributed evenly. It's very much typical that the highest and the most exposure is in the sort of marginalized areas, the lower income areas from emissions from transportation in cities. Just as one example, we did a study, I think it was published last year in New York City and we actually found that people of color in New York City are exposed to like much higher than average emissions from diesel trucks and non-Latino white residents are exposed to much lower than average emissions from trucks. So we already know there's a discrepancy and this is typical in many cities. So of course in the end, we want these policies to help mitigate that disparity, right? So ideally there should be a better impact for the most marginalized communities on these policies. But of course it always come down again to the policy design and I think that's kind of what you're asking me about. So the number, the first thing that we would always recommend is I think you mentioned participation in your first introduction. You have to, it's really, really critical that the marginalized groups are participating in the planning and in the decision-making from the beginning because so you have to go in and you have to really like speak to these groups and understand what are your needs, what are your concerns, what are your issues and make sure that the policy takes that into account and that there's participation throughout the process. And that's honestly like not easy and it is a big effort but I think it's critical to make sure that you come out with something in the end that works. And then of course the other main thing that you have to do is if you're telling people, sorry, you have to, you can't drive your dirty cars into the city anymore. A lot of those dirty cars are obviously the older vehicles that are owned by lower income groups many times. So you have to have these other supporting measures to make sure that the residents that have to give up their, those dirty vehicles can afford to get something either like a cleaner vehicle or funds for alternative means of transportation or in some extreme cases, you can also, the most marginalized groups that are giving the most impact, there are ways to exclude them also from having to fully participate in the whole of the mentioned zone. So that's kind of the framework that we think about when we work with cities on designing low emission zones. I mean, the way you describe it sounds like the right way to do it. And yet when I read about low emission zones, it's inevitably when it's divisive and controversial, and people are fundamentally disagreeing with each other. So are there many examples of good practice? Are there secrets of success? Have we learned how to do it well? Yeah, and I, you know, in some ways, I mean, you might be talking, I know that there's been a lot of media attention around, you know, London's ultra low emission zone. And then it can get divisive and it can, but at the same time, London's ultra low emission zone is actually a good example of a successful policy in a many, many ways. One thing that, you know, I don't know how closely people are following this, but I mean, one thing that they've been able to do through their ultra low emission zone is they've actually been able to half, cut in half the emissions exposure disparity between lower income and more marginalized groups. So there's actually like very positive outcomes that are coming from their scheme. They've also instituted what I was talking about at the beginning was they've offered these complimentary measures. So they have a scrappage scheme in place where essentially if you wanna trade in your old dirty vehicle, you actually get money and it's enough money to actually purchase a ULAS compliant vehicle. The or, or the other option is to use that, those funds to shift to an alternative mode of transport. So you can actually, so you could shift to like public transport or other like things like maybe car clubs and this kind of things or scooter rental. So there's a lot of data to actually show that many people are taking on these incentives and they're actually utilizing the second option and moving away out of their vehicle. So there's actually like reducing car ownership in the city and moving to these other alternative forms of transport. And then the nice thing there is like London actually worked with these sort of third parties, companies to sort of have these offers to improve the offers of what's available in terms, if you wanna get out of your car. There's another example, I mean, I wish there was more examples, but there's another example in, for example, in Brussels where they also have a low emission zone and they have, they're, they're offering sort of yearly what they call mobility budgets. If you wanna move, if you wanna like deregister your car and move to another mode of transport and the amount you get is sort of income-based. And we have seen that like the majority of the people that are taking this offer were from the lowest income group that's being offered the highest sort of incentive to do this. So those are a couple of examples. That's great, really interesting. Thank you very much, Rachel. Let's turn now to Rohit Patania, who is lead at the Center for Clean Mobility at the OMI Foundation in India. Rohit, thank you very much for joining us. And we actually started with Karen talking about the emphasis on inclusivity in transport policy. And I know that this is something you and your Institute have been researching around ensuring inclusivity in mobility. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about that research and particularly what it's finding in terms of the kind of interventions that are most effective in ensuring inclusivity. Thank you for this opportunity. And as Mr. Lucas and Ulka also had talked about gender inclusivity, there's a critical component of the transport policy that needs to be identified in any kind of planning or implementation exercise, especially for countries of the global South. And that is that women and men have different travel patterns. In countries of the global South, particularly women end up doing what we call a strict training where there are multiple trips which are being done in one go, but for multiple purposes. What it results is in that there are multiple short trips that women end up taking. As a result, they end up paying something that we now call as the pink tax or basically paying a higher premium for traveling probably the same distance as a man, but because they've undertaken multiple journeys simultaneously towards as part of the larger trip, they end up paying more. So this kind of disparity often turns up that we see when it comes to the way women participate. Another thing that happens is that the number of choices that women can take because of various reasons, be it for instance concerns on safety or be it the issue of the distance that they can travel, limits the choice of mode of transport that they can often take up. Now, given the fact that a large number of women in India work in the informal space and not necessarily in the formal sector, for them missing a journey means missing a day's wage. Now that is a situation given the fact that there's a significantly poor population in India where women also play a bread earning role. The loss of income can prove to be the difference on a certain day sometimes between having a decent quality of life versus going under. And what are the examples, for instance, on that? You think about, for instance, the way as Ms. Lucas said, walking towards work. Now, what is the distance that they can walk as a result? You have all these other factors on top of it, for instance, air pollution that limits the amount of walking that you can undertake as a result because our transport policy is not necessarily comprehensive, it is not accounting for the people who are walking or are taking non-motorized transport modes. Or for that matter, when you see that affordability becomes an issue of the kind of transport options that are available, for instance, we have seen that 40% of the women we surveyed in one of our recent reports, for one of our recent reports, saw that could not find the metro or the mass rail transit systems affordable for themselves. Added to that is another layer that we often tend to miss and that is the increasing use of digital technology for accessing public transport or shared mobility options. And more and more we have noticed that women tend to be at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing digital technology. That also ends up limiting the kind of choices they have when it comes to accessing transport systems for the various purposes that they are going out for. So when you sort of combine all these factors and overlay it with the fact that the transport system as it is not necessarily very favorable when it comes to employment opportunities for women to begin with, then that also adds to the various factors that I said before. And so the way we need to reimagine to an extent the transport policy paradigm for the developing world will have to probably take a leapfrog from the patterns that we've seen in the global North where the learning curves that we have gives us an opportunity while we have barriers, but it also gives us an opportunity to pick out what has worked and what has not worked and adopt some of the better options or lessons. Of course, they have to be brought in and customized for the local environment, but there are definitely learning that all of us can contribute to and the opportunities can be created where a transport system that is eventually inclusive that is affordable, that is safe and that is accessible not just from a physical sense but also from a digital sense is possible. That's really interesting, Raleigh. Thank you. And if we take the point you're making about these asymmetries between men and women and therefore the different needs, have you, shall I say, favorite examples of interventions that address that need? I mean, Alka told us about the example of the buses for women in Karnataka. Are there others that that strike you are teaching us how to do things well? No, definitely. There are very interesting examples that are taking place across various parts of India. For instance, in the city of Delhi or even in the city of Kochi in South, in Kerala, we have seen, or Bhuvaneshwar in East India, we have seen women operated three wheeler fleets. So what it does is that it makes the perception about what would otherwise have served a shared mobility purpose and was perceived to be unsafe by women at large, all of a sudden seem more affordable because a woman is driving it. That kind of intervention has really changed the way women would perceive, not just from an employment opportunity, but also from actual mobility purposes, the way they can use more modes of transport than they would be able to previously. So that's definitely an example where we see it. Another, of course, is as more and more platformization of the global economy is also taking place, we are seeing these opportunities where women are also participating. So for them, when they have access to a mode of transport that is easily financed for them, and we are seeing aggregators in India also working to some extent on pilots where women are being brought in and they are being allowed to access vehicles on a rental basis that enables their economic mobility, there is a definite transformation. The empowerment of women from a financial perspective means wonders for the social fabric also, simultaneously, because the more the woman is seeing additional barriers are being broken in the process. So these are a couple of examples that I would definitely like to highlight. Of course, we can always talk more on this. Well, let's talk more on this. So I think let's stay on gender for a minute and I'll go back to Alka for us maybe because you mentioned that you had some examples of programs specifically targeted at women. So maybe I could invite you to say a little bit more about that please, Alka. Thanks, and maybe what I could do is also broaden the conversation a little bit from gender, meaning women to other genders, other social identities as well. I mean, Karen spoke about age and poverty. So I think the way I think of it is three types of interventions. The first is including more stakeholders. The second is using tenders and targets, and the third is trying to overcome social norms with subsidies. And let me just give you a couple of examples of each of these from the transport sector. So on stakeholders, I mean, Rohit just spoke about aggregators, platforms of aggregators. There are a couple of very interesting experiments in India happening right now with aggregation platforms for electric freight trucks, because that is really one of the, probably the largest source of transport sector emissions to mean there's some trucks, and it's also supposed to be the fastest growing. What this platform really does, it's called eFAST, it brings together under the umbrella of the government, original equipment manufacturers, that is those who manufacture these trucks, then logistic service providers, so those who use trucks for delivery, they commit to using and to switching a share of their fleet to electric, charge point operators, those who would set up the charging infrastructure, policy makers themselves and so on. And I think that's the kind of ecosystem creation that needs to happen as we are putting in place these clean transport policies, and as they need to scale up and accelerate in pace. The second similar example is from the United States with the Electric School Bus Initiative that WRI is one of the organizations that's part of that. And there also it brings together the school districts, residents, moms, policy makers at the local level as well as right up to the federal level, and of course those who make the buses and so on. So again, you have all of the stakeholders involved and I think that's really very key to having any kind of policy that brings in greater emphasis on equity. The second example I want to give, the second type of approach I want to talk about is tenders and targets. So for example in Delhi when they, or in Delhi city when they had a tender for electric buses and this is also another example of aggregation because when there was an aggregated tender for electric buses, the price discovery because of economies of scale turned out to be electric buses that per kilometer were cheaper than diesel buses per passenger kilometer. So this is also another example for the aggregation but they didn't just stop at this technical or environmental intervention. They actually put in the clause somewhere saying that you must have a certain number of women drivers to be trained. So that's how you can use this. Tamil Nadu state where we are working with the MSMEs that I spoke about have a specific target that for their scaling programs 50% of the participants must be women. So I think there is a need for very explicit targets for building this into tenders and contracts so that the cost can be taken care of and strategies can be built. And the third is, if we need to overcome social norms that exist in countries like ours, there will need to be a huge explicit effort that goes beyond the transport sector. So if you want women to come to work and work in these assembly lines and electric vehicle factories, then we also need to provide safe transport to them to get to these trainings, get to that place of work. We need to provide safe hostel accommodation for young women who are away from their villages. We need to provide safe childcare for mothers who are leaving their children when they go to work. And one example again from the, this happens to be from the state of Tamil Nadu again, is that the government is providing subsidies to automotive companies to train or upscale a fraction of their workers. And they're doing this because they see this in this hub for the state's economy. And so they're saying that we will give for six months, 4,000 rupees per month for male workers and 6,000 rupees per month for females, gender and disabled workers. So I think we do need to have these kinds of policies that recognize that in order to overcome the social inequity, social and structural inequities that exist, there will have to be more explicit subsidization. Doesn't have to be from the government. Thanks. Thank you very much. Okay, I want to go to Karen, but just before I do Karen if you don't mind, because Rohit wanted to come in just for a second, please. No, just wanted to add to what Ulka said, and I'm very glad that you brought up the point of transgenders and people of other genders being brought in. So in India, we've had a very good example in a couple of cities, where the mass transit systems, at least one station was in those two systems, they ensure that the majority of the staff that was working on the stations on a variety of jobs were people who belong to the transgender community. Now, at one level, one may say that it is even perhaps at best symbolic and it should be widespread, but it is a very good opportunity to demonstrate at least for the public to change the perception about the way they see transgender people and also show that they're just as efficient, they're just as hardworking. And so that actually was appreciated, in fact, at a larger city scale as well. I mean, there were other challenges in terms of retention of workforce that also turned up in the process that, you know, even going ahead, we also need to figure out how to, you know, if we bring people or try to include them in the system, how can we also retain them? So that is another question that has come up and I think the policies really need to address some of those questions going forward in countries like India. Thank you very much, Rahid. Karen, I'd like to bring you back in and really welcome your reflections on anything you've heard. But if I had a question, it would be just we're talking about these gender issues and we've heard about them, particularly in the context of the Global South, but I suspect that they exist everywhere, but maybe they're different in different parts of the world. I'd welcome your views. I'm not really a gender expert, to be honest. And so what I do is I think first about poverty and certainly in the Global North, there's a huge difference between the low-income households and the higher-income households. And one of the big divisions therein is the fact that a large percentage, something about 60% of low-income households in the UK, which is a car-dominant society, still don't own a car. And so obviously there's a huge disadvantage to households that don't own a car. And this is not just, you know, it's not so much obviously in the dense urban areas where public transport might be an alternative solution, but in the peripheral areas, the suburban areas, of which there's not many activities that are available, not much employment opportunity. Services are not there, shops are not there. And so people have to travel in order to be able to do just basic everyday things. They have to travel either by public transport or very slow, very circuitous, often quite expensive journeys. So they have to go into the city centre and back out to get a lot of time-consuming journeys. And just because you're poor doesn't mean you've got a lot of time on your hands. People seem to think that if you're poor, then you've got all the time in the world to spend and it's not true, and also expensive, right? So one of those different things, but so I think that basically one of the big divides is the lack of ownership. But of course what we don't want to do in terms of the events of sustainable mobility is see a lot of very low-income households trying to afford a car, see people to participate. That's exactly what we don't want. And even if, you know, I mean, certainly in places outside of Europe, if everybody tried to drive, then they wouldn't, you know, that if you went from 20% car ownership to 80%, now we've got the UK, no one would get anywhere. So we can't come up with these private vehicle car-owned low-op efficiency solutions. We have to start thinking about how can we move people around? And what I wanted to say is a big element of this is we keep talking about the transport system, but it's a hugely large use-driven, a mad-dynamic way of life. We're helping housing. We see it, especially, for example, in India, we see housing being cleared, people housing being cleared, and then shoved out into the urban periphery and be alone, and particularly women report that then they literally cannot access activities anymore. They become unemployed as a consequence of that move. And if they stay employed, they have much more arduous journeys, long distances, it breaks up families, children have to go and live with grandparents. You know, it's just a crazy situation where because we're not actually building integrated, planned urban areas, and it's very difficult to do it in a rapidly organising context, I realise that. But even in the UK, what we're seeing is like new housing being placed in very suboptimal places if what you want to do is exist without a craft. And most low-income households, that's what they want to do, and that's what we want them to do. So it's a land use issue. It's also, you know, when we see new businesses locating on the outskirts of cities and then expecting large labour forces, and then they turn around and say they have a labour shortage, they don't have a labour shortage, they have a locational problem, they put their business in a place where people can access it. We've seen it a lot in the UK with airports, but we've also seen it with other hospitals when it be located in the outskirts of the hospital, also in Floyd, a huge amount of low-income stuff. So it's really not, you know, we can always, as the transport providers, be tracing these technical solutions, these system solutions, system-run solutions, but in what we're doing is battling against other forces that are basically driving things in the opposite direction, then we have a real problem. And I think that because of what we're brought out in terms of, you know, people's, women's, different travel patterns and activity, heat and so on and so forth, women do tend to, you know, disproportionately impacted by these things. But a body actually disproportionately impacts anybody who isn't able to actually get around their private motor vehicle as and when they like, whenever they like, at what different costs is necessary. And there was just one thing in the chat which was that somebody was asking, don't we need data in the answer? Yes, we really need more surveys, like the Omni Survey, Omni Foundation, well done, Ropi, fantastic. The more data we've got, the more we're able to disaggregate that data by income, by gender, by age, by disability, by ethnicity, by all of these other intersecting factors, the more that we're able to see this imbalance, to see these inequities within the system and also to be able to then socially assess the impact of what it's currently in. And those data sets need to be collected regularly, reliably and in a standardized way so that they're comparable over time and also comparable between places. And because, thank you, Karen, because in your opening remarks, you mentioned the importance of social impact assessment. And I wanted to ask you, I suspect I might know the answer, but what's the state of the art there? Does that happen routinely? Are governments good at doing that kind of assessment? Is there a good file of social impact assessment? Are impact being tracked well? Well, in the case, they mostly happen around major new transport investments. And therefore, actually, they are quite well done within the development banks, for example, particularly the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank is very good on this. The addition of new initiatives that goes on is nothing in comparison to what's going on. And it's only new projects, not minor projects. And they do necessarily do this social assessment in order to, they basically mitigate some of the problems of the project rather than thinking of holding new projects. The project's already been decided, then the social impact is set. And then there's some mitigation goes on in order to try and improve the inclusivity and safety and other things around those but for these different guaranteed groups. Whereas what we really need to do is undertake social assessment of what we've already got, think about what the problems are, and then for our projects and our programs and our policies in, to solve those inequality problems and those imbalances. So we're doing it sort of, it's good that it's happening on the new projects, but it needs to be done in a more comprehensive way across the whole of the sort of transport strategy of the city, for example. That's a decision-making tool. Thank you very much, Karen. Rachel, if I could turn to you again, please. And going back to a point that Karen made earlier, which was about access to new technologies and clean technologies and affordability. And I think this is something ICCT has looked at and EVs are the obvious example where a lot of countries are being very successful in supporting the very rapid rollout of EVs. But obviously an equity and access question comes up immediately. What are your thoughts on how we can address affordability to new technologies like electric vehicles? Yeah, exactly. I mean, so, right, there are a number of barriers to the transition to electric vehicles, right? I mean, I would say like there's sort of two buckets. There's sort of like the financial barriers and then there's these kind of like other nonfinancial barriers. So, I mean, I think, you know, I talked a little bit about we need, when we go in and work with governments on regulations that are gonna speed up the adoption of EVs, we're doing that because we know that that's the best thing to do for the environment. Because we know that there's gonna be more vehicles sold so they should be the cleanest vehicles possible. On the other hand, we need to make sure that those vehicles are gonna be, you know, be able to be affordable for everyone and also that there's going to be, you know, the available like charging infrastructure and that sort of thing. So that's why we always are not just recommending doing regulations like that in a vacuum. We're always recommending adding in like fiscal incentives that take into account income and also other incentives to like, you know, make sure that infrastructure is being, charging infrastructure is being installed in, you know, part, you know, so that it's successful for people that live in apartments and other areas like that. So those are, so we can't, it's not a best practice to just put in place a regulation that guarantees these vehicles are gonna be sold. You have to have like these complimentary kind of EVs. I mean, I think all of us probably hear them all the time. And, you know, a lot of the most disadvantaged groups are the ones that actually have like the sort of worst access to the really best information, to be honest. For various reasons, it could be language barriers, it could be a number of different things. So that's another kind of area that I think that maybe sometimes gets overlooked, but just public campaigns to raise awareness on these issues, I think is another thing that can be done and has been done well in a number of places, but needs to be really integrated into the, when new policies are rolled out. Thank you, and Rachel, earlier on I was asking Karen about when we focus on inclusivity, how much do we think about what I'll describe as tweaks to an existing way of thinking and an existing set of policies and infrastructure to factor in inclusivity. And one could apply the same question to sustainability in terms of how much do we think about, let's say, just replacing ICEs with EVs and our fundamental readings of proactive transport and new types of infrastructure. So what are your thoughts on that question? And also what are your thoughts on the intersection of, let's say, the inclusivity agenda and the sustainability agenda? Is there a danger that they're almost been treated as parallel problematics at the moment? Yeah, I mean, that's a loaded question. So I'll take it from the fact of like, we are in a race right now. I mean, we all know that we're about to go into a cop. We have to stay in line with the Paris target. So that's gonna be always what we come back to, like how are we doing in terms of making sure that the transportation sector is gonna be on a path to stay well below two degrees. And we've done lots of modeling and lots of analysis around this. And even if you look at the best case scenario in terms of replacing existing car sales, with ICE sales, with EVs, as fast as we think is reasonable and feasible, that's not gonna get you on a well below two degree trajectory. I mean, that might align you almost with two degrees, but it's not gonna get you well below two degrees. And there's a big difference, right? Every point one of a degree is a massive difference. So we need other measures. So we need definitely things like, we're talking about avoid and shift measures. We definitely need to get those old really dirty vehicles off the road much faster than they would naturally come off. We need to obviously make sure that the electricity production is being done clean, because then it's not as helpful if you're charging EVs with fossil fuel power sources. And a number of other, and there's also, we know that there's gonna be additional ICE vehicles sold. We also have to make sure that those are actually as efficient as possible. So there's many different measures that we have to focus on. It's just not a one-size-fits-all thing. The thing that I will just say about EVs, I mean, we can't, again, we have such a short timeframe where we have to get this done. I think it's unreasonable to think that there's not gonna be any more cars sold. So we have to be pragmatic. So again, I think there was a good point made by Karen is it's not gonna be the same solution in necessarily every market. And we can learn from each other, but it is gonna be, we work in many, many different countries. Policies are made differently in every country. The data looks different in every country, different considerations. And we have to, I think, have a more nuanced approach of actually looking at the situation, being pragmatic and also keeping our mind on the fact that we do not have time to waste. And then also doing our best to make sure that we're not harming people further with these policies. Thank you very much, Rachel. And Olga, my turn to you and colleagues were almost out of time, but I did want to, Olga, come back to you just one more time because Rachel is articulating the sense of urgency very well. And you made it very clear and expressed very well how much change is coming in the kind of work and opportunities for people, but also then how that changes, how we think about inclusivity and access and mobility. So given that our clean energy drive and our net zero goals are going to bring a lot of rapid and significant change in the transport sector, how do we make sure that we use the opportunity of that change to really make a push for inclusivity and equity as we do so? I think we don't, I think there is no other way to do it. I think the two have to be tackled together. Otherwise, the sustainability agenda will not get the kind of public support that it needs to be scaled up. And if you don't have public support, you won't have political will behind it. And I think it's just absolutely essential that in whichever sector we're working, power, transport, industry, land, in all of these, then people can't be collateral damage, right? I mean, we are, of course, very becoming more than more aware of trade-offs within the, between sectors themselves as a result of sustainability interventions. So for example, if we need to scale up renewable energy, the land that will be required for that scale up is the same land that we also need for carbon sequestration through tree planting. It's also the same land where we need to harvest rainwater to adapt and be more resilient to greater heat stress in the future. It's also the same land where we need to protect biodiversity. And it's also the same land where people work. For example, there are pastoralists who need access to this land for grazing. There are large-scale changes that might happen in disruptions to social networks as well. If we reduce people's access to land for greater clean energy. But there are solutions. So for example, one of the experiments on the pilot that has been tried a lot right now in India is agrifotovoltaics. Could you have on the same land solar panels that have a little more distance, little more height that you could grow vegetables or other crops so you could leave it open for sheep to graze, not goats because they do a lot of damage, but sheep seem to be more docile. And again, we have a lot of experiments from Australia, from other parts of Europe to learn from. And again, what this means is that this will mean a cost, that there is a cost implication. If we build that into the tender for the project, if it is included and the private sector can sort of factor this in, then there can be both social and livelihood benefits along with the environmental benefits. But it will take deliberate effort. It won't happen by itself. The two will not just go hand in hand. But I think there are a lot of new examples to learn from. I like your art too as well. Rohit, please. Adding to the conversation that has gone on so far, when it comes to inclusivity, one very important peg that we often tend to forget is, we have to make sure that everybody across the board is able to afford the transition. I think that is a critical answer that we are still sort of struggling with. An example being for instance, when you look at the long-distance trucking sector today, you know, for freight purposes, in a country like India, long-distance trucking is a very disorganized space. Average fleet size does not exceed two or three trucks, two or three vehicles. And the margins that they're operating on are very small, generally around seven to 10% essentially is the margin that they earn. On top of that, in countries like India, truck is not just employing one person, it's actually like a family. That kind of bonds the kinship that exists in that space. So all of a sudden to expect people who are running on thin margins, who are already probably borrowing significantly to run their operations, to expect them to surrender their conventional trucks and to switch to electric trucks, is going to be met with opposition instantly. Because one, there is no certainty in how that transition can be made affordable for them. Second, the answers to what will happen, for instance, in terms of job losses that may arise, because you know, for instance, the mechanics, the familiar mechanics, all of a sudden they don't have any businesses because the number of parts is reduced. So that kind of ecosystem approach and the affordability part of it, especially becomes a big question. We've seen this, especially with the platform economy as well. Oftentimes we have noted that the people who enter the platform economy or the gig jobs, they tend to own secondhand used vehicles. Now used vehicles, we want them to be scrapped. Definitely they have an environmental benefit, but the reason why they're moving to used vehicle needs to be understood better. That is because their affordability and their credit history, that is the individual who's buying that, is not necessarily allowing them to afford a brand new electric vehicle. And there are no electric vehicles, secondhand markets right now in countries like India. So what is it that can be done? Something we suggested is, instead of looking at credit history, you could go by cash-based lending, cash flow-based lending, and there are examples of plenty in India for that. But we also need to start thinking innovatively about how we can make this transition affordable so as to make it inclusive. Yeah, no, I think that's a perfect note to end on and I think the point is well made and it reminds us there are many dimensions of this, many specific local dimensions where we have to think about the impacts on specific communities, specific people, how are their lives gonna be impacted and how can we make sure that their lives are improved? Because ultimately, that's what these transitions are about, improving people's lives and in an inclusive and accurate way. So thank you all Karen, Elka, Rachel and Rohit. Certainly I've really enjoyed this. I've learned a lot from all of you. It's a fascinating topic and one which really needs a lot of attention. So I'm glad we haven't solved any problems today but we've shone a light on a few of the things that need further consideration. So I'm very grateful for the four of you for joining us and I'm very grateful to all of the people who joined us online. And I'd say to all of you, do please consult our website. This is part of an ongoing series of webinars. There's another one coming up in just a few weeks time that we'll be telling you more about very soon and do get in touch if you want to discuss anything to do with people-centered clean energy transitions with us further. So we'll close there and thank you all and have a good day. Thank you very much. Thank you Brian. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.