The objective of the paper is to provide information on the actions being taken or considered in ECMT Member and Associated Member Countries (essentially the OECD Countries) to reduce or minimise transport's adverse environmental effects. Firstly the difficulties in making comparisons between countries or groups of countries is discussed. There are various ideas of what transport's significant environmental effects are, and on what the priorities for dealing with these effects should be. Data is presented on emissions of different pollutants from a number of countries. Problems with and limitations of these data will be mentioned. Regulations on technical standards for vehicles, their introduction and enforcement are briefly compared. Measures that have been taken, or are being taken, in some countries, to accelerate the introduction of state of the art technologies, are examined. It is now widely accepted by experts that fully taking account of the environment in transport policy making has non-trivial consequences for transport. The degree to which this has been realised by politicians remains low, however, most countries do not envisage fundamental changes to their transport policies. It is argued that environmental issues have not consistently been treated by any country. Some examples of inconsistencies between fiscal, or other measures in the transport sector and environmental objectives are described. The societal dilemmas on mobility and its consequences are examined with a view to seeing how these dilemmas can be resolved, nationally and internationally.
Abstract