Global climate change is expected to cause sea level rise, which will have major effects on Singapore because it is a small, low-lying island state. With the high degree of urbanization and industrialization on the island, land is scarce and very valuable. Examining three sea level rise scenarios for the next century, we explore whether Singapore should defend their coast or allow it to be inundated. Across ten coastal sites representing all market land in Singapore, we found that protection was the lowest cost strategy. The annual cost of protecting the coasts of Singapore will rise over time as the sea level rises and will range from 0.3 to 5.

Sea-level rise, as a result of climate change, will likely inflict considerable economic consequences on coastal regions, particularly low-lying island states like Singapore. Although the literature has addressed the vulnerability of developed coastal lands, this is the first economic study to address nonmarket lands, such as beaches, marshes and mangrove estuaries. This travel cost and contingent valuation study reveals that consumers in Singapore attach considerable value to beaches. The contingent valuation study also attached high values to marshes and mangroves but this result was not supported by the travel cost study. Although protecting nonmarket land uses from sea-level rise is expensive, the study shows that at least highly valued resources, such as Singapore's popular beaches, should be protected.

India is experiencing rapid growth in motorization. The government and policy makers are responding to this growth by building inadequate, unsustainable infrastructure mostly geared toward private automobile owners. Because more than half the trips in India are served by public transport, and there is high usage of nonmotorized transport, the country is well poised for sustainable development. Yet policy makers must recognize this and provide an infrastructure to support it. This paper employs a bottom-up approach to explore four scenarios of growth: business as usual (BAU); energy efficiency (EE), including a large share of energy-efficient small cars; a two-wheeler world (TWW); and sustainable urban transport (SUT) with an emphasis on mass transit. These scenarios employ different, though not mutually exclusive, directions of growth that could be supported with appropriate policies. Carbon emissions would be highest under the BAU scenario, followed by the EE, TWW, and SUT scenarios. Assumptions applied to the scenarios include increasing the share of minicars, improving fuel efficiency for different types of vehicles, and reducing distances traveled for different types of vehicles, all of which significantly decreased the carbon content of fuels. This study suggests reasonable results that could come from a number of policy recommendations. More can be done to restrain the growth of emissions as policies become bolder and technologies improve.

Gender is one of the key socio-demographic variables that can influence travel behaviour, but it is often the least understood. Understanding travel behaviour by gender will help better design transport policies that are efficient and equitable. Due to the gendered division of work in households, women often have multiple tasks and activities. As a result, women are more likely to have shorter commute distances, to chain trips, to have more non-work related trips, to travel at offpeak hours, and to choose more flexible modes. This study examines travel behaviour by gender in eight different cities, across three different continents, focusing on transport mode, trip purpose, travel distance and departure time for Auckland,

Cities are growing differently across the world, even within the same region, and presenting different transportation trends and challenges. Existing transportation services and travel behavior are some of the key variables shaping future transportation trends and carbon emissions projections. This study uses five developing cities in Southeast Asia to illustrate how different policy scenarios can help cities achieve more sustainable transportation development. Cities in Southeast Asia encompass distinctive characteristics, such as a wide range of transportation alternatives, often in the form of informal transit, and although they are not growing as rapidly as Chinese or Indian cities, their levels of transportation emissions have been increasing consistently. This study examines how different policies and measures will affect transportation mode choice and carbon emissions through the construction of mode choice models and the application of three policy scenarios. Carbon emissions can be reduced by as much as 93% in 2050 if cities implement a combination of land use planning changes, public transportation development, and economic policies for a modal shift to more energy efficient mode choices. Such policies and measures will therefore be able to contribute to city level climate goals or national climate targets.