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Dear reader,
At the Global Mobility Call world congress in Madrid, Spain last week, the future of sustainable transport was on full display—China-made electric cars used as taxi cabs for mobility as a shared service, a prototype of a hyperloop high speed train system, among others.
European commissioner for transport Adina Vălean said during a keynote address at the conference that Europe has already pledged Є93 billion (US$98 billion) for electric vehicle investment, with Spain pouring Є16.9 billion in grants for green transport.
But before the world can effectively shift to clean energy, global leaders like the United States and China must cultivate cooperation instead of antipathy, international economist Jeffrey Sachs told a 4,500-strong audience at the conference.
At the same time, Asia's role in combatting the biggest problems of our time needs to be recognised, and solutions to social and environmental problems need to come from more homegrown social investors, said Naina Batra, chief executive of Asian Venture Philanthropy Network at Tuesday’s global conference in Bali, Indonesia.
A case in point would be a study which found that if the Southeast Asian region alone spent US$10 billion a year today, rising to US$46 billion by 2030 to address conservation gaps, our biodiversity could help generate ecosystem services worth US$2.19 trillion a year or about two-thirds of the region’s annual gross domestic product.
Meanwhile, high crop prices from wheat and soy due to the Russian-led war in Ukraine are hurting the burgeoning plant-based protein industry, highlighting how intertwined our supply chains and low-carbon ambitions are. No problem in sustainability is easy to solve, it seems, as our troubled world becomes more interconnected.
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Hannah Alcoseba Fernandez Correspondent, Philippines |
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