Video Message
Beijing, China
Excellencies,
Distinguished participants,
It is an honour to address the Global Sustainable Transport Forum 2026.
Transport connects people to jobs and essential services, businesses to markets, and allows countries to trade and prosper.
Yet, recent years have starkly reminded us of the vulnerability of these connections.
Today¡¯s global transport and logistics networks face unprecedented pressures: geopolitical tensions and conflicts, severe supply chain disruptions, maritime bottlenecks, rising costs, and escalating climate impacts.
These cascading challenges send a clear message: resilience must be the cornerstone of our transport networks. We need resilient systems capable of withstanding shocks, adapting to sudden changes, and recovering quickly.
This agility is essential not just for moving goods, but for ensuring food security, maintaining access to essential services, driving economic development, and accelerating the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
When transport fails, the burden falls heaviest on developing countries. Higher freight costs, extended transit times and unreliable networks cripple competitiveness and sideline developing countries from international trade.
Our transport systems must therefore be more resilient.
True resilience, however, does not simply mean building multiple, overlapping, and increasingly complex transport routes for every possible contingency. That approach carries steep environmental costs, wastes infrastructure and resources, and ultimately reduces efficiency.
Instead, we must pursue smart resilience. We need transport systems that adapt intelligently, optimizing existing capacity, and leveraging data, digital technologies, and innovation to anticipate and respond to disruptions.
This requires better interoperability, information sharing, logistics planning, and international cooperation.
Crucially, our pursuit of resilience must reinforce, and not compromise, our efforts to reduce emissions and build sustainable transport systems. Sustainability and resilience are two sides of the same coin; they must advance together.
This dual imperative is precisely why the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Transport 2026-2035 matters.
The UN Decade provides a critical window of opportunity to bring together Governments and all relevant stakeholders around a shared vision: advancing transport systems that are sustainable, safe, inclusive, accessible, efficient, and resilient.
No single country or network can overcome today¡¯s challenges alone. International cooperation remains our strongest asset as geopolitical tensions place additional pressure on global connectivity and trade.
In this context, I commend China¡¯s strong commitment to the UN Decade of Sustainable Transport and for its valuable contributions to advancing sustainable transport globally.
The Global Sustainable Transport Forum serves as a vital platform for sharing experiences, promoting innovation, and strengthening international cooperation. The UN Decade cannot just be about setting ambitions; it must be about implementation ¡ªidentifying what works, learning from one another, and scaling successful solutions worldwide.
Together, we can engineer global transport systems that not only move people and goods efficiently but remain steadfast and adapt when the world changes around them.
I wish you all highly productive deliberations.
Thank you.