Annual Fleet Forum Conference

The annual Fleet Forum Conference took place in Brindisi, Italy in November 2008. The Fleet Forum (www.fleetforum.org) was founded in 2003 as a joint initiative of International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Vision International (WVI). Nowadays it consists of over 40 members including NGO’s, international organisations, the UN, academic institutions, donors and corporate partners. The focus is on issues surrounding humanitarian fleets within the aid and development community.

Around 30 organisations attended the conference, which concentrated this year on the economics of fleet mobility; how improved fleet management leads to better resource utilisation and more efficient aid delivery.

Following a survey held previously to the conference, the attendees were most interested in ‘fleet management’, followed by ‘safety’ and ‘environment’.

UNEP explained the options of reducing the environmental impact of one’s fleet. Attendees were informed about how the PCFV Clean Fleet Management toolkit can be used to develop a clean fleet strategy for every organisation, including humanitarian agencies. The TNT case study was shared. This shows how TNT Turkey reduced emissions and saved fuel costs by developing a clean fleet strategy. Currently, UNEP and WFP, with support from TNT, are cooperating and developing a clean management strategy for WFP. For this, TNT has seconded a staff member to the PCFV Clearing House at UNEP. WFP itself talked about their clean fleet experience so far, now that they are using the UNEP clean fleet management toolkit.

Overall the Fleet Forum Conference was an interesting conference where the humanitarian organisations and other attendees where able to exchange ideas, report progress and network.