This coming 28 November, just before the start of negotiations at the COP21 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, world railway organisation UIC will coordinate the arrival in Paris of a series of trains from across Europe, Asia and Russia as part of an international campaign dubbed “Train to Paris”.
“Train to Paris” is an international-scale demonstration of UIC’s long-standing commitment, on behalf of its 240 members worldwide, to tackling climate change and related issues, organising substantive action to develop sustainable transport systems across the globe.
Trains are set to depart from Berlin, Bonn, Brussels, Rotterdam, Moscow, Beijing, and Ulaanbaatar. Carrying delegations to the COP21 negotiations in Paris, the purpose of these trains is to emphasise the importance of developing sustainable transport systems - which represent part of the solution to climate change.
The trains will converge on Paris on 28 November 2015, the weekend preceding the start of the COP21 negotiations. Amongst the events to be held in connection with “Train to Paris” will be a high-level symbolic welcome hosted by UIC and attended by a delegation featuring senior representatives of the United Nations, French government and European Union, as well as key stakeholders in the railway community, both public and private sectors, operators and suppliers.
The rail sector’s pledges
The railways pledge to help protect the climate by:
- Reducing CO2 emissions: on average, a journey by train emits 3 to 10 times less CO2 than the equivalent journey by road or air.
- Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions: rail represents 9 % of transport worldwide, but produces only 3 % of total transport-sector greenhouse-gas emissions.
- Increasing the share of renewable energy source in the energy mix used to power trains: wind, solar, hydroelectric, etc. Many countries have already taken major steps in this direction, from Germany to the USA (California), not forgetting the Netherlands and India, which recently commissioned wagons covered in solar panels.
The key messages of the “Train to Paris” campaign are outlined in this video:
To find out more about UIC’s “Train to Paris” campaign – 28 November 2015