Bogota, Columbia: Transportation Climate Change.

 

The purpose of this blog is to discuss the actions of Bogota, Colombia to fight climate change and how transportation climate change affects Colombia nationwide. In Bogota, the main problem causing climate change is transportation pollution which accounts for about half of the pollution in the city.  The city’s environment secretary Carolina Uruttuia states that “ Fossil fuel powered cars, buses, and cargo trucks - some belching black clouds of smoke - emit a big share of 14,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide entering Bogota’s environment daily “ (Moloney). 

In response, there have been a number of actions to combat transportation based in Colombia’s Capital. Notably, the city government has committed to expanding bike lanes, walking paths, electric bus use, and adding more electric cable cars all across the city. Many of these actions are designed to help the city's poorer residents along with members of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities. The city has a number of goals in order to combat climate change for the long term, stating the aim to cut “greenhouse gas emissions by at least 15% by 2024, and by half by 2030, with the aim of being carbon neutral by 2050” (Moloney). This is an lofty goal, though with COVID travel restrictions in place Bogota will likely reach their 2024 goal. Bogota also pledged along with 100 other cities to combat climate change in an agreement called the C40 Cities network (Moloney). 

Bogota’s use of electric buses is already producing positive results for the city. There are about 350 electric buses that are used by about 180,000 people a day. The city’s  plan is to introduce 1,485 electric buses in Bogota by next year. The efforts have been described as taking 42,000 cars off the street a year and if the numbers are met Bogota will have the largest fleet of electric cars of any city outside of China. The use of bicycles has also been encouraged, especially with younger generations of Columbians across all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. 

This becomes a much larger problem when you look at Colombia nationwide. Transportation in Colombia is a major issue as the country has no national train system and virtually all goods and foods have to be delivered by trucks. The nation’s three largest cities Bogota, Medellin and Cali are all completely landlocked, with over 13 million people living in these three cities alone, the problem shows little signs of being solved. There have been numerous attempts to get trucking companies and busing companies to engage in more environmentally friendly practices but these attempts have met little success and resulted in strikes and street protests. In the past the city government of Bogota has backed down, though now the city has been taking measures such as buying the polluting buses directly from the companies. Hopefully the positive steps taken by Bogota can spread nationwide. 

Work Cited: 

Moloney, Anastasia. “Bogota Crowdsources a Green Transport Future to Cut Emissions.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 26 May 2021, www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-climate-change-transportatio/bogota-crowdsources-a-green-transport-future-to-cut-emissions-idUSKCN2D7203.