Integrating transport, environment and health policies

Policies on transport, environment and health need to be better coordinated, with a view to integrating them. The potential conflicts between transport and environment and health policies will increase at all levels unless effective action is taken now. There is a need to enhance cooperation and coordination between different sectors in central and local governments, as well as between governments, the public and the private sector.

Consideration of the health impacts of policies has to be better integrated into approval procedures, impact assessments, and evaluations of the costs and benefits of transport plans, land use planning, and infrastructure programmes and investments.

Shifting transport to environmentally sound and health-promoting modes.

Raising awareness of transport and mobility sustainable for health and the environment, including efficient driving behaviour.

Multisectoral cooperation is necessary to ensure that environment and health requirements are integrated and their authorities are both involved in transport-related decision-making processes, such as those on transport, water and land use planning, infrastructure investment programmes and policy decisions.

There is a need to develop scientific guidelines for the attainment of transport sustainable for health and the environment, and in particular for the integration of environment and health requirements and targets into policies and plans, based on knowledge of the full and combined impacts of transport-related health risks, including the establishment of threshold values to protect public health, where possible.

There is a need to develop and implement policies to promote modes of transport which lead to health and environment benefits, aiming at a shift to modes of transport with lower specific emissions and accident risks. In particular, policies which promote safe and environmentally friendly cycling and walking by providing safe infrastructure and networks, implementing measures for traffic management, enforcing speed controls and speed limits that are appropriate to local circumstances, and designing roads and settlements taking into account the needs of pedestrians and cyclists.

Environment and health requirements must be properly integrated into transport, water and land use policies, infrastructure programmes and investments and other transport-related planning activities. Environment and health authorities must be fully involved in all levels of decision-making, and international cooperation on sustainable and health-promoting transport should be encouraged.

There is a need to review and where necessary develop further strategies or introduce national action plans to ensure the proper integration of health and environment concerns into transport, and land use strategies, in particular, through the further development of National Environmental Health Action Plans (NEHAPs), and promote similar actions at the sub-national and local levels.

Shifting transport volumes to environmentally sound and health-promoting transport, by promoting those modes which are linked with high levels of physical activity, can be the safest, cause the lowest specific emissions and noise, and best conserve resources. In parallel, discouraging the use of modes of transport and technologies which damage health and the environment.