Building Sustainable and Inclusive Mobility through Education. What Implications for the Company?

Like other European countries, France is facing the challenges of a climate emergency. Clean technologies and digital optimization could go a long way towards meeting these challenges. An examination of decarbonization policies around the world shows that the vast majority of them give priority to technological leverage, with a view to promoting green growth and strengthening industries.

Nonetheless, achieving the objectives set by COP21 as part of the Paris Agreement will also require a major transformation in lifestyles. With this in mind, numerous studies have shown the crucial importance of three areas in particular in terms of carbon footprint: mobility, food and housing, which together account for around 70% of per capita emissions.

These challenges make mobility a priority for decarbonization. However, when it comes to transforming behavior in this area, the measures adopted are generally based on economic instruments (carbon taxes, urban tolls) or regulations, such as low-emission mobility zones (ZFE-m) and bans on polluting vehicles. These instruments are blind to social inequalities, and are therefore likely to cause mobility decarbonization policies to fail for lack of acceptability. Overcoming this situation requires us to rethink the very notion of mobility as a fundamental common good, and to deploy mobility education that is both sustainable and inclusive. This article proposes to develop such an approach from a conceptual point of view, and then to present the issues at stake for companies, bearing in mind that four out of five employees say they are concerned by the limited place given to thinking about environmental transition in their company (UNEDIC study, April 2023). ).