Progress report (2012-2013): MDB group works on sustainable transportation

Executive Summary

 (Jan.14, 2014)In June of 2012, at the Rio+20 Summit of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, our eight institutions delivered our "Commitment to Sustainable Transportation" (Rio+20 Commitment) declaration. In that statement, we announced that we expect to provide more than USD175 billion in loans and subsidies for transportation in developing countries over the next decade with the aim of increasing our support to the concept of sustainable transportation. Recognizing the need to focus on tangible results to support sustainable transportation, we also expressed our commitment to submit annual reports on our loans related to sustainable transportation and on accords developed for this purpose.

Beginning with Rio+20, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have already taken several important steps to implement our Rio+20 Commitment. The first year of our engagement focused mainly on:

• Finalizing work agreements
• Develop a common monitoring and reporting framework and
• Develop ways to monitor sustainability in our transportation operations 

This report [1] provides only a general overview of our activities in 2012, the first year of the 10-year commitment. This is the first time that our eight multilateral development banks are reporting our efforts in the transportation sector in unison. As such, the evaluation of transportation operations contained in this report remains a work in progress, and should be considered as such. However, the report indicates that we are on the right track to meet our Rio+20 Commitment.

In terms of volume, we collectively approved more than USD20 billion in financing in 2012 [2]. Beyond financing, multilateral development banks continue working together to improve the sector by engaging in capacity building, knowledge exchange and policy dialogue.

In principle, we have completed a framework needed to develop monitoring and reporting procedures on our transportation projects. These procedures have been evaluated through a pilot program involving several of our multilateral development banks. These tests show that the system is easily applicable to projects supported by the majority of our multilateral development banks, and serve as a useful tool for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different transportation projects in terms of sustainability.

In the coming years, we will build bases on these initial achievements to implement the Rio+20 Commitment.

2. Calculated on the base of approvals in 2012, except for the Islamic Development Bank, whose reporting on the approvals are made during the Hijrah (H) lunar year corresponding to the period between November 2011 and November 2012, and the World Bank, which reports its fiscal year 2013 during the period of July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013.