Background and rationale

By definition, sustainable transport includes financial stability, social consciousness and environmental responsibility. Hence, sustainability requires a balance between these three elements. The primary scope of NTM is however environmental responsibility, i.e. narrowing down sustainable transport considerable. Still, the environmental field itself includes a wide diversity of aspects to consider. For transport these are:

– Emissions of pollutants to air, soil and water
– Emissions of greenhouse gases
– Noise emissions
– Use of fossil and renewable energy
– Use of land, sea and air space, i.e. intrusion in nature, and causing congestion and barrier effects
– Use of finite and scarce resources leading to shortage and waste

These direct environmental effects of transport operation lead to several negative second order effects, e.g. climate change, acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion, impacting biological diversity, ill health etc. The complex correlation between direct and indirect effects is an extensive scientific area where NTM only grasp a fraction in our models and data. What we do know is however that minimizing or eliminating direct effects commonly reduces the indirect effects. This is also the reasoning behind our focus on the direct and more measurable effects.