Latin American and Caribbean countries have made strides in commitments to reduce emissions from the transport sector in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) but there is room to do more, especially on freight, panelists at a side event at the UN Cop 30 climate summit said.
Vehicles carrying freight represent around 20pc of all modes of transport in Latin American and Caribbean cities', but they are responsible for around 40-50pc of emissions, panelist Felipe Ramirez, a director of urban mobility at the non-profit World Resources Institute, said on Tuesday.
Road freight is responsible for moving around 70pc of Latin American and Caribbean countries' commodities, said Maruxa Cardama, the secretary general of Slocat, a global partnership that promotes sustainable, low-carbon transport.
Ramirez laid out the main challenges to decarbonize freight in the region, such as replacinghigher-emitting older fleets and increasing electrification. He also called on future NDCs to address the decarbonization of ports and airports more directly.
The Latin American and Caribbean countries' NDCs also lack clearer targets to decarbonize railways, Joo Hyun Ha, the head of advocacy at the International Union of Railways, said.
The transport sector in general also needs to look beyond electrification, which would mean giving people more access to alternative modes of transport in cities, such as walking, biking and the public transit.
But the main issue that looms is financing, Ramirez and Ha said.
"That is still the question that none of us has an answer for," Ramirez said. "We know there is not a lot of money to go around."
Financing for climate is one of the main issues to be discussed at Cop 30. But the topic was left off the initial agenda and will instead be discussed in presidency consultations.
The climate finance topic is encompassed in a request from a group of developing countries to discuss the Paris climate agreement's Article 9.1. This section of the accord states that "developed country parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country parties" — a topic that dominated Cop 29, with many developing nations disappointed at the outcome.
Cop 30 president Andre Correa do Lago said on the summit's sidelines that the topic was not left off the agenda, but rather "fit in in an original way".
Delegates will discuss the issues not on the official agenda in a plenary on 12 November.
Road before
But some Latin American and Caribbean countries have shown some progress on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector, panelists said.
Most Latin American and Caribbean countries included transport in their latest NDCs, but approaches vary. Chile and Colombia, for example, are focused on electrification, with the first targeting 100pc of the public transport in the capital Santiago to be electric by 2035 and a nationwide fleet of 4,400 electric buses by 2026.
Santiago had around 3,000 electric buses in 2024, according to a report by Agora Verkehrswende, an NGO focused on climate neutrality in transport. That represented 40pc of the city's fleet and was the largest in Latin America.
Mexico also focuses on electrifying vehicle infrastructure, but also has plans to increase fuel efficiency. Brazil is eyeing the expansion of biofuels. It has one of the largest mandatory blending requirements of anhydrous ethanol in gasoline and for biodiesel in diesel in the region and is the world's second-largest biofuel producer, trailing only the US.
Brazil also has $40bn mapped to expand its road infrastructure in the next 20 years, the undersecretary of sustainability for Brazil's transport ministry Cloves Benevides said. The country is also expecting to auction 15 highways in 2026, he added.
Chile, Colombia and Mexico are early adopters of decarbonizing their transport sectors and "have strong policies, the right instruments and are working on the right direction", Reinaldo Fioravanti, the Inter-American Development Bank's infrastructure coordinator for Brazil said.
Brazil is also trying to electrify the public transportation fleet in the Amazon region, but wording in general on transportation is limited in the current NDCs, Fioravanti said.
