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The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said Tuesday in its ITF Transport Outlook that in the face of shifting global trade patterns, international freight transport volumes will grow more than fourfold (factor 4.3) by 2050. The ITF International Transport Forum is an inter-governmental organization within the OECD. The ITF Transport Outlook examines the development of global transport volumes and related CO2 emissions and health impacts through to 2050.
The report said that average transport distance across all modes will increase 12%. As a result, CO2 emissions from freight transport will grow by 290% by 2050. Freight will replace passenger traffic as main source of CO2 emissions from surface transport.
The North Pacific route will surpass the North Atlantic as the world's most busy trading corridor in terms of freight volume in ton-km, growing 100 percentage points faster than the North Atlantic. The Indian Ocean corridor will see large growth, with freight volume quadrupling.
Intra-African (+715%) and intra-Asian (+403%) freight volumes will see particularly strong growth to 2050. Road transport will dominate here due to lack of other modes.
The share of domestic transport of international freight flows, identified here for the first time, accounts for 10% of trade-related international freight, but 30% of CO2 emissions.
