• Digital divide

Digital divide

Sustainable mobility as the ability to meet the needs of a society to move freely, gain access, communicate, trade and establish relationships without sacrificing other essential human or ecological value today or in the future. This ‘Facts and Trends’ briefing provides an overview of key issues and data related to the challenge of developing sustainable mobility solutions to enable economic and human development. The paper highlights trends while providing specific statistics on mobility in developing countries.

The paper makes the following observations:

• lack of access to transportation and information are both symptoms of poverty and key factors in keeping families, communities and nations poor
• access to transportation and communication is unequally divided between countries and between regions
• access to mobility services is improving in the developing world, but vehicle ownership is growing too fast for infrastructure investment to keep up and not fast enough to close the mobility divide
• recent developments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have greatly increased the opportunities for people to “connect” virtually without the need for a face to face visit or transaction
• lack of access, cost and unreliability of mobility services are barriers to trade and economic development
• transportation infrastructure in developing countries is struggling to keep up with the growing urbanisation
• improving rural mobility enables people to migrate from subsistence to commercial
  agriculture and to gain access to essential services such as health and education
• improving mobility will require energy and financial resources and will come with an environmental cost.
  

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