ODA Reporting for Transport

Low- and Middle-Income countries (LMICs) are facing a wide range of challenges in advancing their economic and social development and in pursuing internationally adopted goals for Climate Change and Sustainable Development, including Poverty Reduction.

A number of these challenges relate to transport and mobility. Mobility is significantly constrained for millions of people in LMICs, due to lacking or impaired availability of transport options. Moreover, available transport options are often dependent on fossil fuels causing pollution, noise and emission of greenhouse gasses as well as the burdening of trade-balances.

While transport is second only to energy in attracting climate mitigation finance (yet far below estimated needs), substantial finance gaps for the sector have also been estimated in terms of investments needed to ensure the fulfilment of other sustainable development goals and needs of LMICs, including climate adaptation and poverty reduction. In short, the urgent needs to provide support for sustainable, low-carbon, resilient mobility options in LMICs are widely recognised.

Official Development Assistance (ODA) is one of the mechanisms through which funding is provided to LMICs. ODA is managed and monitored by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to which all ODA donor countries are members. The traditional objective of ODA is the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries. Today, however, ODA is not only considered as a means to boost economic development and alleviate poverty but also as a lever to help LMICs pursue the full range of Sustainable Goals including the mitigation of and adaptation to Climate Change.

A key question to ODA for the transport sector is therefore what role it plays in providing access for all by sustainable transport modes and climate compatible transport solutions. This is not least of interest considering that the United Nations General Assembly recently has declared that the coming ten-year period 2026-35 is to be the UN Decade of Sustainable Transport.

With the support of the UK Aid funded High Volume Transport programme the Danish green policy think tank CONCITO was tasked to,
– map the ODA spending on transport up to 10 years back;
– review current procedures and data codes used in reporting of transport ODA;
– summarize selected literature on transport, sustainable development, and ODA;
– conduct interviews with ODA experts;
– deliver a set of ideas for new categories or indicators to measure and report on ODA in support of sustainable transport.