Youth at the Intersection of Safe Mobility, Environment, and Health

We celebrated World Environment Day with a webinar titled Youth at the Intersection of Safe Mobility, Environment, and Health. The webinar discussed the connection between road safety and environmental sustainability. Participants also took active participation in the topic of how young people can promote road safety and improve the security and protection of communities and ecosystems through advocacy, community mobilization, and policymaker engagement.

The webinar was moderated by Youth Leadership Board Member Alex Ayub and featured SDG 13 Champion Yasmine Al Moghrabi, UNICEF Health Specialist Dr. Syed Hubbe Ali, and YOURS - Youth for Road Safety Advocacy and Campaigns Manager Sana’a Khasawneh.

Dr. Ali began the discussion with a run-through of the road safety situation in India. He pointed out that, in his country alone, 42 children and 31 adolescents die because of road crashes every day. He pointed out that some major causes of the tragic reality include poor infrastructure, lack of awareness about road traffic rules, reckless driving, and overspeeding.

He has pointed out that organizations like the Government of India have been making significant efforts to address these issues. For instance, there have been ongoing campaigns to promote safe journeys to school and avoid road traffic accidents in the country, as implemented by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Other adolescent health efforts are mental health, menstrual health, and more.

Dr. Ali touched on the upcoming G20 Summit, putting special attention on the G20 Regional Consultations. He expressed that the regional consultations are a way to highlight, discuss, and deliberate the needs of adolescents and youth in India while also identifying ways in which their health and well-being can be improved. The consultations are also a way to collectively identify and define ways on how youth can be meaningfully engaged, identifying which roles they can play to address identified barriers.

Our SDG Champion for Climate Action, Yasmine Al Moghrabi, talked about how climate and road safety are connected. She began by presenting some statistics like how cars and other vehicles are the second biggest contributor of greenhouse gasses that release into the atmosphere and how low-and-middle-income countries account for 93% of global traffic fatalities despite owning only 60% of the world’s vehicles.

She emphasized that road safety is a central piece of the climate agenda and Global Goals.

While the statistics may be more negative than positive, Yasmine pointed out that there are things we can do to help address climate and road safety issues. She encouraged governments to invest in multi-modal, energy-efficient, and smart transit transportation and engage young people in policymaking and decision-making efforts around climate and road safety. She called on young people and youth-led organizations to advocate for youth involvement in sustainable transport policy development and implementation and also act as role models for the community to observe road safety best practices.

For her intervention, YOURS Advocacy and Campaigns Manager Sana’a Khasawneh reiterated the message of this year’s UN Global Road Safety Week of rethinking mobility. She talked about how sustainable mobility means creating more opportunities that promote active modes of travel for young people and other vulnerable road users, pointing out how a shift from car-centric travel to people-centric ones helps improve climate and public health.

She encouraged the participants to look at their individual transportation behaviors, adopt more eco-friendly modes of travel, and look to carpooling and other ridesharing initiatives to start rethinking mobility.

Learn more about road safety and climate by checking out the links below;