Rising Usage Of Used Vehicles Causing Major Pollution: UN

NAIROBI, (IANS) – While heavy-duty vehicle (HDV) exports represent a modest 3.6 percent of the global automotive trade’s total value, their associated CO2 emissions have surged by over 30 percent since 2000, with trucks contributing 80 percent a report by the UN Environment Program said.

The report recommends ways to reduce the harmful aspects of used HDVs on people’s health and the climate.

According to the study, HDVs are projected to considerably continue to grow with increasing economic activities and the need to move people and goods. This is based on past trends where global sales of trucks and buses doubled in 15 years.

Many developing countries rely on used heavy-duty vehicles imports to grow their fleet. While this promotes more affordable means to increase mobility needs in these countries, the report finds that regulation and enforcement on the quality of used HDVs imported are either low or non-existent.

To date, no country has minimum requirements for exporting used HDVs. The report finds regulations in over half of used HDV importing countries to be “weak” or “very weak” and enforcement to be inadequate.

Worldwide, only two countries have included used vehicles in their national climate action plans.

Rob de Jong, head of UNEP’s Sustainable Mobility Unit, said: “Trucks and buses contribute to economic growth just about anywhere in the world, but ambitious regulations are needed to curb their emissions causing major environment and health impacts. Introduction of cleaner bus technologies can be a major driver for the global revolution to low and, ultimately, zero emissions transport.”

The report emphasizes that it is a shared responsibility of importing and exporting to countries to ensure cleaner and safer used vehicles are on the roads of developing countries.

The report represents the first effort of quantifying and qualifying used heavy-duty vehicle flows, based on export data from Japan, the European Union, and Korea — altogether representing about 60 percent of the total new and used HDV export market — to 146 predominantly low- and middle-income countries.

The report has limitations, most notably discrepancies in statistics, as well as lacking publicly available data from the US, which does not separate exports of new and used vehicles, and China, an emerging exporter.