Infrastructure is one of the Action Themes at the Climate Adaptation Summit (CAS) 2021.
Why is Infrastructure an Action Theme at CAS 2021?
Scaling up infrastructure investment will be vital for ensuring long-term progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. There is an urgent need to expand access to clean water and energy, improve transport links and build protective infrastructure such as flood walls.
In the near term, infrastructure investment will also be a vital ingredient for supporting economic recovery from COVID.
We must invest more in infrastructure, but also get that investment right: decisions made today will have impacts for many decades to come.
We are already seeing physical impacts of climate change, particularly with extreme events such as wildfires, floods, and landslides. Beyond direct damage to assets (such as roads or power lines), these have large social costs from the resulting disruption (e.g., businesses closing due to power outages, people unable to access healthcare as roads are impassable). We need to ensure that the infrastructure being built today is ready for the impacts of climate change.
Climate change is not just an added challenge for infrastructure. It also provides an opportunity for innovation, new technologies and better planning. For example, increasing the use of nature-based solutions can reduce costs, yield benefits for nature and enhance resilience. If done right, efforts to strengthen climate resilience will yield more reliable long-term cash flow for owners, improve service quality for users, and enhance economic and social resilience of communities.
Diagrammatic representation of climate hazards, infrastructure exposure, infrastructure service disruption and economic impacts.
Current impacts of climate change already amount to USD 29 billion per year in direct damages to transportation and power generation in developing countries; hydropower revenues in Africa are declining by up to 60%; and, in the Arctic, 70% of existing infrastructure, such as airports and roads built on decreasing permafrost, is under threat of collapse.
Until 2030, between USD 75-86 trillion will need to be invested in infrastructure, which is more than the current USD 50 trillion stock of assets. However, global estimates suggest that incorporating resilience only adds about 3% to total costs.
Investing in climate-resilient infrastructure supports progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as being highly cost-effective: every $1 invested in resilience for infrastructure yields an average of $4 of benefits.
Benefits and costs of illustrative investments in adaptation.
How is CAS 2021 going to make a difference on infrastructure?
The CAS 2021 Anchoring Event on Infrastructure will bring together global decision makers, financers, engineers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. It will catalyse a global effort to ensure that all significant new and existing infrastructure is climate-resilient by adopting a people-centric approach and systematically mainstreaming climate resilience into infrastructure planning, financing, design, operation and maintenance.
This is a very ambitious goal, but also necessary to ensure that the trillions of dollar being invested in infrastructure every year contribute to the resilience and provision of services for communities and economies.
This event will promote opportunities to enhance people’s climate resilience through infrastructure. It will also showcase good practices and stimulate discussions on the way forward to transform climate resilience from an exceptional best practice to the norm. This implies:
Raise and create standards for resilient infrastructure investment.
Support governments in updating national technical codes and standards to account for physical climate risks and adapting to international best practices.
Strengthen the resilience of existing and new infrastructure systems.
Take stock of current approaches, metrics and processes being applied throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.
Strengthen knowledge and capacity for managing climate risks and promote the investment in data and tools to provide widespread benefits, underpinning climate-informed decisions.
Push infrastructure asset owners to assess and manage climate risks in order to prevent possible issues caused by warming, flooding etc.
Based on stress tests of national infrastructure systems, support governments to focus on strategic planning and prioritise adaptation options to develop and finance a pipeline of climate-resilient infrastructure projects.
Support infrastructure investors to reduce the perceived risk and increase investment in climate-resilient infrastructure.
Focus on demonstrating the benefits of incorporating climate resilience into infrastructure, rather than on additional costs.
Help governments look into new financing models to enhance the business case for resilient investments.
Stimulate governments to ensure that their direct procurement of infrastructure provides flexibility for innovative approaches and support resilience, including nature-based solutions.
Help the insurance industry, asset owners, governments, and donors to achieve more rapid recovery by combining financial reserves, providing pre-arranged credit and expanding insurance.
