The Climate Express on 5th December from Brussels to Copenhagen was the highlight and flagship of the ‘Train to Copenhagen’ communications campaign towards the COP 15 in Copenhagen. UIC, the initiator of this special train, together with Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and James P. Leape, Director General of WWF hosted more than 400 high level EcoPassengers: climate change negotiators, rail business leaders, environmental activists and journalists.
Although the COP 15 conference itself did not fulfill the expectations, the Train to Copenhagen campaign leading up to the conference made key stakeholders aware of the transport problem and the potential that rail offers in reducing CO2 emissions of the sector. The symbolic train journey from Kyoto to Copenhagen and the Train to Copenhagen web site and the national campaigns by UIC members strongly contributed to the success of the project.
The UIC Sustainable Development Team has defined the next steps and actions for 2010 to intensify the cooperation with key stakeholders and to promote rail towards international institutions.

Objectives of the action plan 2010

• Bringing greening of the transport sector on the international political agenda and political decision making process; intensify cooperation with key stakeholders
• Promoting rail as the greenest solution, showcase rail’s sustainability improvements which give credibility to our efforts
• Support members in accessing ‘green funds’
• Creating platforms to build new alliances for green innovation in transport

Key actions

1. Intensify cooperation with key stakeholders
2. Support members in identifying and applying to green funds
3. Demonstrate with Energy and Transport experts the emission reduction potential of rail
4. Developing further the UIC EcoTools (EcoPassenger and EcoTransIT)
5. Widen the scope of UIC activities from Environment to Sustainable Development (‘UIC Sustainable Development Declaration’)
6. Cooperation with other international and transport related organizations (‘joint forces’)
7. Presence at key conferences on transport and climate change

The UIC team would like to express again its gratitude to all UIC members, who contributed to the Train to Copenhagen campaign!