By Johnny Sharp

CLIMATES stands for Changing Landscapes for Infrastructure and Mobility: Assessing Transport and Environment Scenarios, and the initiative was launched last year, seeking to give, “CIHT members a greater voice to inform how the Institution champions its climate action theme.”

Input from over 300 professionals was sourced, via an online engagement survey as well as 15 in-person and online workshops looking at the UK as well as Hong Kong, India, and the United Arab Emirates.

As a result, the report ultimately homes in on a set of seven recommendations, the first of which is ‘Equipping professionals for climate action’. Or in other words, improving, as the report puts it, “The knowledge, skills, mindset and leadership to support governments, industry, academia and the public on climate action.”

CIHT Immediate Past President Glenn Lyons, who co-authored the report, explains further: “That’s about continuing professional development for highways and transportation workers, which both improves their technical competencies around climate change and climate action, and also their professional resilience, because this is a career-long undertaking for all of us.”

One of the ‘Conditions for change’ that the report identifies is, “Demonstrating that transport decarbonisation is on track,” which sits alongside another condition, “Public-focused, positively oriented storytelling.”

Lyons expands: “This is the communication part more than the education part. Many of the participants in the report were saying, you can’t just keep on with doom and gloom.

“In a populist era with reference to the stupidity of net zero in some quarters, you’ve got to get the public onside. There are good things happening here in terms of jobs, in terms of cleaner air, in terms of the advances in technological change and the affordability of those things.

“In the UK, in terms of decarbonisation, we are making some serious progress. We've got the framework of the interim carbon budgets. We actually have a net zero strategy, and we have a transport decarbonisation plan. So, where it's good news, tell us, and where there are real challenges, be honest about that too.”

Bringing the workforce together

One of the recommendations grouped under ‘Processes to drive change’ stresses the importance of, “Effective working between professionals and government.”

“We are a complex and diverse sector,” Lyons explains. “Encompassing multiple bodies. So, there should be a serious look at whether we've got a bit of a messy landscape there, which isn't helping, because we need clarity and agility to move forward, for the sector to help government and vice versa.”

Perhaps one of the most challenging recommendations – labelled ‘Outcomes needed from change’ – is, “Prioritising climate action in national transport strategies.”

This is spelt out succinctly in the report itself: “The UK Department for Transport should ensure that its forthcoming Integrated National Transport Strategy (with the breadth of issues it will need to address) has climate action as a core pillar, and it should convey how this can work positively to support economic and social prosperity.” Ultimately the report concludes that it marks “the end of the beginning”.

And on that score, Lyons stresses that it’s down to those who believe in the importance of climate action in the sector to make it a reality. 

“I'm optimistic that we've got something well thought-through, informed by what hundreds of professionals have told us.” he says, “But only time will tell whether we've got the appetite, capacity and seriousness in the sector to really grab this by the scruff of the neck.”

Discover more about CIHT CLIMATES, and its recommendations.

Image: traffic light with green leaf, sustainability concept. Credit: Shutterstock.

Read the Doubling down on climate action in highways and transportation report