After years of cycling industry lobbying the United Nations (UN) is become more proactive in promoting cycling worldwide.
There have recently been two major reports from the United Nations that call for all member nations to spend more on cycling infrastructure and to create environments in which cycling can flourish.
Of course the United Nations has limited powers and cannot dictate policy to its members, which are sovereign nations that make their own laws. However there are 193 members in the United Nations General Assembly which has steadily grown from 51 founding members when the UN was set up on 24th October 1945 immediately after the end of World War II.
This means that virtually every country on the planet is a member and UN policies, whilst not binding, are important.
The first of these two major policy announcements calls for all countries to invest at least 20 percent of their transport budgets on walking and cycling infrastructure to save lives, reverse pollution and reduce carbon emissions, which are rising at over ten per cent a year.
Lack of investment in safe walking and cycling infrastructure is contributing to the deaths of millions of people and overlooking a great opportunity to contribute to the fight against climate change. The report surveyed the progress towards safer walking and cycling infrastructure in 20 low- to middle-income countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, where compared with high-income countries, twice as many more people die in road traffic accidents. For example, in Malawi, 66 percent of all road fatalities were pedestrians and cyclists.
At present most countries, including Australia, spend less than 1% of their transport budgets on cycling and walking, so the call for 20% would represent a radical policy shift.
The second announcement relates to the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, which is held once every five years and was recently held in Quito, Ecuador and commonly referred to as Habitat III.
At this conference, held in October the UN adopted the New Urban Agenda.
In the New Urban Agenda (NUA) cycling is strongly linked to healthy, accessible, safe, inclusive, green and liveable public spaces; it also relates to cycling as encouraging culture exchange, informal markets, participatory processes, making our cities more economically vibrant and generating a higher quality of life. Therefore, signatories of the NUA have committed themselves to promote safe, inclusive, accessible, green, and quality public spaces, including cycling lanes, as well as to promote walkability and cycling towards improving health and well-being. In addition, they also pledged to take measures to improve road safety, actively protect and promote cycling mobility, encourage national, sub-national, and local governments to develop and expand financing instruments for cycling infrastructure.
The NUA also strives to make cities inclusive and accessible for all, stressing a special attention to the needs of women and girls, children and youth, older persons and persons with disabilities, and those in vulnerable situations, therefore cycling is referred to as more preferential mode of transport compared private motorized transportation.
‘Cycling is a key tool in achieving the cities we need and the cities we want based on the New Urban Agenda’ – claimed Bernhard Ensink, Secretary General of the European Cyclists Federation (ECF) which is a bicycle industry funded lobby group that has spent three years working on getting cycling included in the NUA.
