Despacio and SLoCaT: two years of great work

For the past two years, Despacio has served as the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) representative for the Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) Partnership. CAF – Development Bank of Latin America hired Despacio to advance these issues in the region and to participate in various conferences on SLoCaT’s behalf.

During the first year of the contract (2013-2014), Despacio was involved in a number of meetings related to the Sustainable Transport Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean (FTS-LAC), which had taken place June 2011 in Bogotá.  This work included producing preliminary study documents, facilitating communication among FTS-LAC countries and coordinating follow-up work. In addition, Despacio helped draft and translate CAF’s contribution to the Rio+20 Voluntary Commitments on Sustainable Transport. As a follow up to this document, we developed activities for the COP 19 in Warsaw, including Transport Day, and held meetings related to the SLoCaT Results Framework, the UNFCCC and other UN processes in Warsaw, New York, and Washington.

Despacio and SLoCaT were also heavily involved in planning and coordinating sustainable transport-related events at the World Urban Forum VII, which took place April 2014 in Medellin. We translated programs and other documents and published information about the various relevant events at the forum on different media outlets, including the SLoCaT LAC Twitter, which Despacio manages. Finally, we staffed the SLoCaT stand during the week of the conference.

During our second year as the SLoCaT Latin America representative (2014-15), we helped plan and participated in a number of high-profile regional and international events.  The first was the Rio+20 conference, held in Bogotá in August 2014. Next came the 10th International Congress on Sustainable Transport, which took place in October 2014 in Mexico City. There Despacio led a SLoCaT event on mobility and territorial integration. The third conference was CLATPU, held in Rosario later that same month. The SLoCaT event there focused on public transportation accessibility, travel time reduction and South-South collaboration. Finally, SLoCaT held its annual Transport Day in December 2014 in Lima, as part of the COP 20, which included a number of plenaries and side events on topics like sustainable transport, climate change mitigation, and low-carbon policy in developing countries.  Despacio played a major role in organizing logistics and content for Transport Day, coordinating between the SLoCaT main office and entities in Lima. Throughout the year, Despacio continued to manage the SLoCaT LAC Twitter account, using it to promote these conferences and share relevant information with its followers.