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Road Safety, Sustainable Development and Aid Effectiveness
As a ‘cross cutting’ issue road safety can be integrated into a wide range of related policy areas. There are very strong synergies, for example, with policies designed to promote automotive fuel economy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. All interventions that have the effect of reducing road traffic speed deliver a ‘green’ co-benefit. Similarly, programmes to support good governance, police and legal reform are closely related to the major challenge of promoting effective road traffic law enforcement (see Feature 9). To achieve appropriate funding levels, therefore, road safety should be horizontally integrated into these broader policy agendas which already have a secure funding base.
In our 2006 report the Commission suggested that governments could contribute $200 million with other sources contributing the remaining $100 million. On this basis if OECD governments (that are members of the Development Assistance Committee) contributed according to their current percentage share of total aid, the annual contribution of the G8 nations should only be about $14 million per year. This is very substantially less than is already committed to comparable public health problems like TB and malaria, but would accelerate the implementation of cost effective road safety programmes across the developing world. The Commission recognises, of course, that given the current economic recession especially affecting the major OECD economies, development assistance budgets will be under pressure. Similarly charitable Foundations and other private sector sources are coping with a very tough investment climate that will force hard choices about their ability to fund global road safety initiatives. For this reason, the Commission recognises that it is necessary to adopt a flexible approach to funding its proposed action plan. An interesting alternative approach recently suggested by Professor Jeffrey Sachs to fund improvements in transport infrastructure overall would be to adopt a small tax on global transport.23
In fact, this integration strategy is already anticipated in the major effort to improve aid effectiveness that was approved by multilateral and bilateral donors in Paris in 2005. If all major donors, including those in public health, follow the Paris Declaration’s principles of ownership, transparency and harmonisation, and apply them to cross cutting issues such as road safety, a significant barrier to effective road injury prevention will have been overcome.
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A DECADE OF ACTION FOR ROAD SAFETY
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