Jill Warren was in corporate law firms for 20 years, doing business development and working as chief marketing officer. But in her private life, cycling was her absolute passion.
“I cycled for daily mobility,” she said in a phone interview, “and a holiday wasn’t complete without taking a bike along.”
Like many people, she had cycled as a child. But when she got her driver’s license at age 16, like most teenagers in American towns like Cary, Ill., the Chicago suburb where she grew up, the car was her main means of transport.
That changed when she was studying abroad in Freiburg, Germany, where “absolutely everybody cycled.” There, she said, “I rediscovered cycling.”
Now 56, she is the chief executive of the European Cyclists’ Federation (E.C.F.), a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization that advocates cycling as a sustainable and healthy form of transport and leisure. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
Why is the federation’s work necessary?
It’s a chance to make a big difference to people’s health, the environment and the livability of cities. Transport is responsible for about 27 percent of global carbon emissions. Road vehicles account for about three quarters of transport CO2 emissions, and this isn’t decreasing. A recent study found that people who cycle daily have 84 percent lower carbon dioxide emissions than noncyclists.
What is the scope of the organization’s work?
We’re a federation of 70 member organizations across about 40 countries. We make sure that cycling is a part of all relevant E.U., and other, laws, regulations, directives, and gets funding.
We play an active role in regional projects, from pilots to introduce cargo bikes to E.U.-funded Just Streets and Reallocate that aim to improve everything from air quality and green spaces to safety for schoolchildren. We also coordinate the EuroVelo cycle route, a network that stretches across 38 countries that’s making everyday cycling more possible. When completed, it will be about 90,000 kilometers (about 55,900 miles).
And we organize Velo-city, a cycling planning and promotion conference where city planners, advocates, academics and politicians from all over the world get together in a different host city every year.
What are some recent successes?
In April of last year, the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council all signed the European Declaration on Cycling, a document for advancing cycling policy with eight principles and 36 commitments on everything from tourism to data collection. Our advocacy was absolutely decisive in pushing for and shaping the declaration.
Does your work include global advocacy?
We have effectively become the de facto civil society lobbying organization on a wider scale. An example is a broad achievement in 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow. When a draft of the transport declaration was released it was all about the electrification of vehicles, with no mention of cycling. You cannot reduce emissions fast enough — and enough — without cycling.
We started a very loud, very vocal campaign, which helped culminate in a last minute revision in the declaration that recognized active mobility — walking and cycling and public transport — as important measures to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement. It was a breakthrough. In 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, at COP29, we achieved another breakthrough, an explicit mention of walking and cycling for the first time.
The Partnership for Active Travel and Health (PATH) coalition, a partner organization, was founded in 2022 to show what can be achieved, not just by lobbying, but by doing. We’ve done research, like a collection of 20 climate case studies of real world initiatives from Indonesia to Canada. We’ve created templates for countries to sign up for their climate commitments to meet the Paris Agreement targets.
Does your advocacy include the needs of women?
If you ask women why they don’t cycle or don’t cycle more, they’re much more likely to point to the safety aspect than men. That makes it even more important that we focus on safe infrastructure in our lobbying. The places with the safest cycling infrastructure, like the Netherlands and Denmark, also have much higher percentages of women cycling.
About five or six women got together and we founded Women in Cycling to have more women in leadership roles and to give them more visibility. When I joined E.C.F. in February 2020, there was only one other female chief executive among our 10 largest member organizations. Today, most are women.
Has being a woman helped or been a barrier?
Both. People know that these days they can’t get away with so called “manels” — all-male panels at big events. That has probably gotten me some speaking invitations and opened doors to be able to advance our cause and our work. But we still have a long way to go. We cannot be complacent.
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