From 26 to 28 October 2026, GLI took part in the 1st Global Convening on Informal and Shared Mobility (GloCon 2026), held at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. The Convening brought together over 300 researchers, government representatives, development partners, trade unions, workers and operators from more than 40 countries.
The Conference
The aim of the first GloCon was to ‘explore new ways to recognise, support, and improve informal and shared mobility (ISM) systems’ throughout the world, particularly the Global South where hundreds of millions of people rely on these systems for daily transportation.
Considering the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals and the decarbonisation of transport, GloCon sought to promote a future in which ISM is properly integrated into transport planning and investment, where governments recognise its workers and operators as partners.
As well as examining ISM through the lens of sustainability, GloCon also placed the industry’s workers and operators at the centre of discussions on employment, affordability, access, and fairness, creating space for the people who work in informal transport to discuss these issues with those who plan, fund and study it.
Our Contribution
Represented by our executive director, Georgia Montague-Nelson, we presented a paper, Informal Transport Workers as Agents of Change in the Transition from Informal to Formal Employment. We discussed our work on Labour Impact Assessments (LIAs), including the training materials we are developing for city authorities on the LIA methodology.
Since 2010, we have documented working conditions and livelihoods in informal transport. Recognising the urgent need to assess the employment impacts of major transport reforms, we have carried out 6,658 questionnaire surveys, 72 focus group discussions, and 149 in-depth interviews across seven cities.
This work is a collaboration between GLI, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF), in partnership with C40 Cities. You can read more about it in our earlier posts:
We also participated in breakout sessions and contributed to plenaries throughout the conference.
Remembering Dave Spooner
As part of the conference, the organisers kindly provided us an opportunity to speak in memoriam of our founder and former co-director Dave Spooner. Dave’s commitment to organising and supporting informal workers shaped GLI’s work on informal transport, and it was an honour to see that recognised by colleagues from so many countries. Dave passed away last year after four decades in the labour movement, but his innovative approach to fieldwork and research will continue to inspire and guide those working in and around the informal sector.
Outcome: The Bangkok Declaration on Informal and Shared Mobility
The main outcome of GloCon was the Bangkok Declaration on Informal and Shared Mobility, adopted on 28 October. It sets out a shared agenda to recognise, finance, upgrade and safeguard informal and shared mobility and its workers. We were pleased to see how prominent workers are in the Declaration. It states that workers, operators and their trade unions are the driving force behind these services, and that engaging with them is a prerequisite for effective and just transport policy.
It also includes commitments on fair pay, labour rights and social protection, support for the transition to formal decent work, gender equity, and building the capacity of workers’ organisations.
We are thrilled that the Declaration makes direct reference to Labour Impact Assessments, showing the utility of our work in this area and the methodology we have developed. The Declaration calls on governments to use them to assess how policies affect workers and operators, and it calls on development financial institutions, public and private financial institutions, investors and philanthropic organisations to support their implementation.
We invite our supporters to read the Bangkok Declaration in full and share it amongst their networks.