Setting up car ‘exclusion zones’ for frequently
Leave the car at home, says report
accessed areas could help tackle obesity and climate change, says the Institute for European Environmental Policy.
The report titled Unfit for Purpose, says that “Car use is clearly an important contributor to the decline in physical activity." In congested areas where local shops, schools and other services exist, the ‘zones’ could be introduced to help people understand the importance of physical activity and help them ‘commit’ to walking.
The extra walking, the report says, could displace at least 11 million tonnes of CO2 from cars – amounting to 15.4% of the total emissions from passenger cars.
The report also says that large scale behavioural
Don't drive your kids to school. Make them walk
change interventions will cost millions of pounds to implement and will need to be maintained over the long term. But these costs are dwarfed by those incurred by the NHS and society through inactivity, ill-health and premature death.
Carolina Valsecchi, from IEEP, said: “The twin crises of obesity and climate change are clearly interlinked through the switch from muscle power to engine power for transport. Concerted action is needed to reverse both these trends.”
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 4 3"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1 1"%3E%3C/svg%3E)