It should also be noted that Latin America and the Caribbean is a highly urbanized region, where 81% of people live in cities, making it the second most urbanized region in the world (after North America), and the most urbanized in the developing world (United Nations, 2018). For these reasons, integrated, multisectoral policies to contain urban sprawl and promote much more sustainable cities are essential. Autonomous vehicles, electromobility and mobility as a service, will not solve the problems of congestion and territorial segregation on their own, and could even aggravate them by leading to more motorized travel. In order to close development, environmental, territorial and social gaps, ECLAC has called on the countries of the region to move towards progressive structural change on the basis of an environmental big push through coordinated sectoral policy measures in combination with investment, regulation and tax schemes. This big push should, in turn, align the paths of different stakeholders, sectors and investments, in order to enable innovations and synergies involving supplies, skills, equipment, services, distribution, networks, demand and patterns. In the particular context of urban mobility, actions should focus on promoting safe, affordable, quality public transport. Automating transport and promoting renewable energy use are not ends in themselves, but part of the necessary response —in terms of strategy and coordinated instruments— for building sustainable mobility in line with the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement. Therefore, as highlighted by ECLAC, mobility and logistics policies should be more integrated and managed through a systemic approach. To increase efficiency and reduce costs within the system, not only will a wider range of technologies and fuels be needed, but also new planning tools, supportive regulatory frameworks and greater political dialogue at both the national and regional levels. Developing countries can benefit from regional integration in terms of capacity-building, adoption of regional best practices and institutional and regulatory solutions that would allow them to generate a market size that would make such efforts viable (Kreuzer and Wilmsmeier, 2014). Although the experiences documented here are limited to proofs of concept, prototypes or implementations, there has been a notable coordination effort both among companies, and between them and the public sector to adapt regulations and generate standards to enable their prompt rollout on the roads. As international experiences show, it is essential for Latin America to encourage public-private coordination in these developments, as well as the active participation of trade associations, transport operators, fuel distributors, research centres and government entities to analyse and report on these issues. New technologies will require large investments, which can be a constraint in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises. It will be necessary, therefore, to design a strategy that promotes financial incentives and the prioritization of funds and incentives for research and development of new technologies, so that companies can plan investments in more energy-efficient fleets and thus support not only their recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, but also facilitate the technological and energy transition in a way that is operationally and economically viable. It is essential to train workers in the sector, first so that they can fully grasp and understand this new logistics scenario, and then to provide them with the necessary skills to participate actively in the digital economy. This involves not only resolving issues of access, cost and speed of broadband, but also providing digital and cybersecurity knowledge that allows them to fully leverage the potential of the digital transformation of the logistics sector.
VII. Bibliography Barbero, J. A. and P. Guerrero (2017), El transporte automotor de carga en américa latina: soporte logístico de la producción y el comercio, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Bloomberg (2018), “La revolución del auto eléctrico está acelerando” [online] https://www. bloomberg.com/latam/blog/la-revolucion-del-auto-electrico-esta-acelerando/.
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