last updated 14th September 05
by 4ecotips.com

70% of world's poor live in Asia

Rapid urbanisation and motorisation are exacting a high economic, social, and environmental cost in Asia's cities, which must adopt measures to make transport more sustainable, a senior ADB official told an international conference on transport recently.

While Asia's rapidly expanding urbanisation has strengthened economic activity in the region, it has also had negative impacts on the environment and on vulnerable groups like the poor, said Bindu Lohani, Director General of ADB's Regional and Sustainable Development Department.

He was speaking at the opening of a Symposium on Environment and Transport, a component of the International Conference on Environment and Transport being held in Aichi, Japan this week.

"About 70% of the world's poor live in Asia," Mr. Lohani said. "If present trends continue, it is to be expected that the number of urban poor will exceed the rural poor population in many of the Asian countries. This is an important challenge for institutions like ADB, which have poverty reduction as their overarching objective."

In most cases transport was the largest contributor to ambient air pollution, especially particulate matter and ground-level ozone, he said. In addition, a rapid increase in the number of vehicles had also resulted in a higher number of traffic accidents, while inadequate public transport infrastructure had increased traffic congestion.

"Asia is running out of options and sustainable transport solutions are the way forward," said Lohani. "In many instances, previous policies focused on the construction of additional roads infrastructure and this has strongly affected the urban quality of life and has gone on at the expense of more environmentally sustainable transport systems like non-motorized transport and low-cost bus rapid transit (BRT) systems."