Sustainable Mobility

What comes to mind when one thinks of sustainable mobility? Is it electric and hydrogen cars, light rail systems and bicycles? If you thought of these things essentially you would be right, but is that everything? Does the whole issue of transportation on the journey of sustainable development boil down to just our dependency on oil and its impacts?

I have always said that though I am a strong environmentalist I have come to the realization that if we are to achieve sustainability then the environment and the issue of climate change are just pieces of the puzzle. I will attempt to look a little bit on the social and economic aspects of this issue of mobility. As with most of my entries, I would look at this entry from a tourism point of view. Taking the issue of the environmental damage out of the picture I will examine two aspects of sustainable mobility often overlooked.

First I would look at mobility within destinations and then between destinations. The way people move through a city is an important factor to the economic development of the city. Encourage economic development, is an important aspect when it comes to sustainable mobility. In tourism there is a term called 'multiply effect', which is in essence this refers to how money is circulated through the local economy without being lost due to leakages (e.g. purchase of foreign goods). Having a high multiply effect is imperative for true economic development and for the multiply effect of a city to be high, locals and tourists need to purchase from local shops and vendors along the streets. This helps with the development of the local economy through promoting linkages throughout the local economy as well as encouraging entrepreneurship. Because of this, the action of going into and patronizing these shops should not be an inconvenience to people if they are to be encouraged. This is where the issue of cars and walk-able cities come into play. In cities that are not conducive to walking and cycling there is always traffic congestion and parking is always at a premium. This has a direct impact on the willingness of people to randomly go into a store and purchase an item due to the stress caused by traffic and parking. For this reason, cities in the Caribbean should try to become as walkable as possible so tourists are able to explore the city without much difficulty, and so and contribute to the development of the local economy. Someone who is walking along the street is more likely to stop and support local business than someone who is stuck in traffic or searching for a park.

Another hindrance to sustainable mobility is that of vertical integration. Vertical integration in tourism refers to large international tour companies have links with international airlines and hotel chains. These tour companies then promote their linkages and sometimes have agreements where they only recommend their partners to their customers. Now, how does this affect the sustainability of island states? The answer is that these island states are then not in control of their own destiny and do not get all of the economic benefits of the vacations they facilitate. In other words, a tourist attraction or hotel in the Caribbean may be at the pinnacle of sustainability charts, yet how its customers arrive at the site may not be sustainable. Research done by the United Nations Economic Council of Latin America shows that the host nation only gets 40-45% of the retail cost of the organized holiday tours that use local hotels and have local aspects, but utilize foreign airlines. This percentage drops even further when the tourist utilizes foreign owned hotels and other foreign owned attractions.

However the mere fact that the airlines can take that much of money away from the host destination, in our case, Caribbean island states, forces us to look as sustainable mobility beyond just the environment. If using foreign airlines to get to vacation destinations can deny the country of approximately half of the money they help generate, then no matter how clean air fuel gets can it really be considered sustainable? The answer is no. Large multinational airlines control air travel and in some cases can ruin a country’s tourism product by deeming that air route “unprofitable”. However it is impossible for all island states to have their own national carrier as they are a huge drain on national funds as we have seen with Air Jamaica in Jamaica.

I’m not quite sure how we are going to deal with this issue but I do know that the current system is not doing small island developing states any justice. Hopefully though, we can begin to look at this issue from a wider perspective and put us on the true path of sustainable development.

So what do you think? Is the current idea of sustainable mobility too narrow?