E-Mobility as a Driver for Change Towards a Gender Transformative and Just Transition to Electric Mobility

United Nations 2 years ago

Uganda’s transport sector is currently defined by men driving heavily polluting internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles on poor quality roads. Motorcycle-taxis have come to be a defining aspect of the transport sector in Uganda, particularly in regional towns and rural areas.1 Women report widespread harassment in the transport sector and are vanishingly rare as motorcycle-taxi or minibus operators. While they represent less than 1% of motorcycle-taxi drivers, they have made more inroads in government roles and in mobility startups. However, official gender-disaggregated data on the sector is severely lacking, with only very limited public data on vehicle imports and registrations, workforce composition, the occasional qualitative report on women in transport, and private sector data that is not made public. The e-mobility industry in Uganda has begun to address some of the major gender gaps in transportation but remains a long way off in gender parity in both leadership and ridership. From a brief survey of the sector, women tend to make up between 30-50% of the e-mobility startup workforce, but without known female founders or executives. Additionally, women electric motorcycle riders represent only around 2.3% of the e-motorcycle fleet, though this is higher than the less than 1% operating in the ICE motorcycle fleet. This report is a deliverable under the project “E-Mobility as a Driver for Change - Towards a gender transformative and just transition to electric mobility” which is being implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The project aims to ensure that the introduction of, and shift to, electric mobility (E-Mobility) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will include and promote the position and interests of women, to create a more gender transformative and just transport sector. Engaging more women in the E-Mobility ecosystem can in turn help to speed up the transition to zero emission mobility systems.
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layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 8 hours ago



Sustainable construction in the UK is accelerating through projects that integrate whole life carbon assessment and embodied carbon reduction into practical, scalable initiatives. The new floating solar farm in a disused Cheshire quarry illustrates how sustainable building design and environmental sustainability in construction can repurpose industrial land for renewable energy generation. This project represents eco-design for buildings with a focus on net zero whole life carbon performance and long-term resource efficiency in construction, aligning with circular economy principles.

Concerns over workforce capacity highlight that life cycle cost strategies and low carbon design ambitions depend on adequate training and sustainable building practices to deliver low embodied carbon materials and energy-efficient buildings at scale. Addressing the construction skills shortage is now central to achieving net zero carbon buildings and decarbonising the built environment, ensuring carbon footprint reduction moves from policy aspiration to measurable outcomes.

Cornwall’s initiative to extract lithium from a restored china clay pit demonstrates circular economy in construction through the recovery of renewable building materials within ecological limits. It exemplifies how environmental product declarations (EPDs) and lifecycle assessment can underpin sustainable material specification and the whole life carbon performance of future low carbon building systems.

Analysts arguing that a fair transition to net zero carbon construction is technologically achievable reinforce confidence across sustainable urban development. The emerging alignment between circular construction strategies, low carbon construction materials, and building lifecycle performance suggests green infrastructure is shifting from pilot projects to mainstream delivery. Sustainable design, informed by life cycle thinking in construction and metrics such as BREEAM v7, is proving essential to transforming green construction into verifiable carbon neutral construction outcomes.

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