Resilient Cities, Sustainable Future: Innovating Infrastructure for the 21st Century
Hossein Nourzad, PhD, CP3P Accredited Trainer
Sustainable and resilient infrastructure remains a key priority for investors and governments globally. Infrastructure—both new projects and the maintenance of existing assets—forms the backbone of any society, significantly influencing its standard of living. Governments consistently demand robust infrastructure, and with low-interest rates, investors seek yields to fulfill their long-term obligations. Infrastructure investments can be part of the solution.
Public awareness of critical sustainability issues, particularly climate change, has reached a tipping point. It’s clear that merely increasing construction to bridge the infrastructure gap isn’t enough. We must improve service delivery and fundamentally transform how both public and private sector project developers plan and procure assets that meet comprehensive sustainability criteria—spanning social, environmental, institutional, and economic-financial aspects throughout the asset lifecycle. This calls for systemic change in response to converging global crises affecting our planet and its inhabitants.
Defining Sustainability and Resilience
To integrate sustainability and resilience into infrastructure and PPP projects, it’s crucial to clearly define these concepts and understand their importance.
Sustainability is about meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It’s a balance of environmental, social, and economic factors—often referred to as the “triple bottom line” (TBL). The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group defines sustainable infrastructure as projects that are planned, designed, constructed, operated, and decommissioned in ways that ensure economic, financial, social, environmental (including climate resilience), and institutional sustainability over the entire lifecycle.
Resilience, on the other hand, is the capacity of systems to withstand and recover from various stressors, including socioeconomic, market, and climate-related shocks. Resilient infrastructure maintains core functionalities and adapts to changing conditions, ensuring longevity and reliability.
The Intersection of Sustainability and Resilience
Sustainability and resilience are intertwined with the shared goal of meeting society’s immediate and long-term needs. In the face of resource scarcity, social unrest, population growth, aging societies, and climate change, the decisions we make today about infrastructure development and operations will have lasting impacts on society and the environment.
For example, climate-resilient infrastructure is designed to adapt to changing climate conditions, withstand disruptions, and recover quickly from such events. This resilience can be achieved through management actions—like adaptive maintenance schedules—and structural measures—like elevating bridges to account for sea-level rise or using natural drainage systems. Flexible and adaptive infrastructure options reduce the costs and impacts of encountering climate changes.
The Urgency of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure
By 2050, the world population is expected to reach 9–10 billion, with three billion people entering the middle class. This surge will drive significant demand for new energy, water, social, and transport infrastructure. The OECD predicts substantial increases in water consumption (55%) and energy demand (85%), risking global water supply crises and severe climate-related events such as extreme heatwaves, increased storm frequency, river flooding, and sea-level rise. Recent decades have already seen environmental threats, including water shortages and weather-related disasters, which jeopardize infrastructure functionality.
Disruptions to infrastructure services have severe consequences for both individuals and businesses. For people, these disruptions affect access to essential services like safe drinking water, transportation, and energy, impacting their well-being and quality of life. For businesses, such disruptions hinder critical operations, affecting economic stability and job creation.
Integrating Sustainability into Infrastructure Projects
The various facets of sustainability interact with each other, necessitating the consideration of these synergies and trade-offs, especially when it comes to creating more sustainable infrastructure. Therefore, having a common understanding of what constitutes sustainability is critical to ensuring that all parties are working toward the same goals. Sustainable development ensures persistent and systemic changes, resulting in improved pipelines for infrastructure projects and better service delivery.
The World Bank’s Sustainable Infrastructure Action Plan highlights economic and financial sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability as the key characteristics of sustainable infrastructure, all supported by effective governance. The concept of sustainable development is widely accepted and has been emphasized in several international agreements over the past three decades, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Sustainable Development Indicators, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Role of Public-Private Partnerships
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are emerging as a viable means to leverage sustainable and resilient financing for infrastructure development. These partnerships can bring together the strengths of both the public and private sectors, ensuring that infrastructure projects are both economically viable and socially beneficial.
PPPs offer a framework where risks and responsibilities are shared, enabling the development of infrastructure that meets stringent sustainability criteria. This collaborative approach ensures that projects are not only cost-effective but also resilient to future challenges, including those posed by climate change.
Building Climate-Resilient Infrastructure
To be truly resilient, infrastructure must be capable of withstanding a range of stressors, from socioeconomic disruptions to climate-related events. Climate-resilient infrastructure is designed to adapt to changing conditions and recover quickly from disruptions. Achieving climate resilience involves a combination of management actions and structural measures.
Management actions might include altering maintenance schedules and using adaptive management to account for future uncertainties. Structural measures could involve raising the height of bridges to account for sea-level rise or enhancing natural drainage systems. These strategies ensure that infrastructure remains functional and reliable even in the face of unpredictable climate events.
The Need for High-Quality Data and Informed Decision-Making
Effective decision-making in infrastructure planning requires access to high-quality, consistent data and the ability to use this information to inform planning. Climate model projections, for instance, are a significant source of uncertainty, particularly at regional and local levels. Thus, having flexible and adaptive infrastructure options becomes essential to mitigate the costs and impacts of climate changes.
Decision-makers need comprehensive and reliable data to make informed choices that will ensure infrastructure projects are both sustainable and resilient. This includes understanding potential climate impacts, resource availability, and societal needs.
A Call to Action
As we move forward, integrating sustainability and resilience into infrastructure planning and development is not just an option—it is a necessity. Protecting infrastructure assets, services, and users through sustainable and resilient practices is essential to ensure that infrastructure meets current needs while remaining robust against future challenges.
By adopting these practices, we can build infrastructure that supports a stable and prosperous society, capable of withstanding and adapting to the inevitable changes ahead. The journey towards sustainable and resilient infrastructure requires a collective effort from governments, investors, and communities, but the benefits will be profound and far-reaching.
