Webinar Overview

The Inclusive and Green Rural Road: Contributions to the SUM4ALL Initiative

A refreshing new initiative has started: the SUM4ALL – carried by the World Bank and others – to bring about a transformation in the global transport sector: greener, more efficient, safer. What is on the anvil is a new vision on rural roads and transport as development vectors, as breakthroughs for change, as instruments for inclusive green growth not mere carriers of people and commodities.

This webinar is given by MetaMeta (an IRF Global Road Achievement Award Recipient). It aims to contribute to the evolving thinking on how in particular rural roads and transport can better contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals and what practical measures could be taken to make rural roads and transport ‘greener’ and more ‘inclusive’ – with a special attention on vulnerable groups: women and unemployed youth.  The webinar uses research findings undertaken under the RECAP Gender Mainstreaming Program in Ethiopia.  It will look at how rural roads and transport can unblock access to rural goods and services; how it triggers direct labour opportunities and skills development, how it triggers the development of local business and how in particular roads can change the physical environment in a beneficial way.

Following the presentation will be a live Q&A session. Join us at 11:00 EDT (UTC -4).

Presenters

Frank van Steenbergen

Frank van Steenbergen is natural resource management specialist and director of MetaMeta (www.metameta.nl), a 30-expert strong company dedicated to sustainable resource management. Dr. van Steenbergen has worked over the past 25 years in water resource management and policy change – covering water resource management, groundwater development, agriculture, partnership building, transboundary water management, irrigation, water harvesting, and wetlands. In his work, he combines policy work, program development, actual implementation support, capacity building, and network development. He has been in the preparation of policy documents, mostly recently the Groundwater Governance Vision and Framework for Action on behalf of GEF, the World Bank, and FAO. He was team leader of the research program Connecting Roads, Groundwater and Livelihoods and is Phase 2 Global Resilience Partnership program on Roads for Water and Resilience, which tries to connect road development with water resources management.