Our partners at COP26 are all contributing to a dramatic schedule that will pitch Glasgow to the forefront of the global response to climate change. The Resilience Hub events platform is live on this site and you are invited to register to attend either virtually or in person. Browse the calendar and register your interest here.
Our partners for the Resilient Infrastructure programme theme are:
Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a partnership including national governments to promote infrastructure resilience.
Infrastructure Operators Adaptation Forum (UK) (IOAF), working together to reduce vulnerability and promote resilience.
University of Birmingham
Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI), private and public institutions in partnership.
What has Infrastructure got to do with resilience?
In the last decade, it has become increasingly important to factor the cost of resilience into the long term planning and design of infrastructure assets and their interconnected systems. The modernisation and expansion of infrastructure that almost always brings economic growth, must now take account of the impact of climate emergencies.
Besides economic losses, infrastructure failures can disrupt supply chains and service delivery networks, often depriving communities of basic services during extreme events and bringing daily lives to a standstill.
While the urgency to climate-proof infrastructure is well acknowledged, its design in the face of climate related uncertainties continues to be a challenge. In recent years, nature based solutions have emerged as a cost effective mechanism to boost resilience and meet some of the extra costs required to plan resilient infrastructure. Indeed, a 2019 World Bank paper found that NbS have the potential to ‘complement, substitute or safeguard’ traditional grey infrastructure and are seemingly a pragmatic way forward, due to nature’s innate ability to adapt to climatic extremes.
What does this mean in terms of projects and initiatives on the ground?
For the purpose of the Resilience Hub, we are focusing on activities that can promote and enable resilience building at different scales and infrastructure lifecycle stages. For example, this could include:
- Designing and/or retrofitting resilient infrastructure assets
- Role of nature based solutions in enhancing resilience of infrastructure assets and systems
- Financing resilient infrastructure assets, financial incentives for resilience
- Interconnectivity between infrastructure networks, especially dependence upon energy sector
- Infrastructure resilience and systemic risk; whole systems approach to building resilience
- Infrastructure resilience in urban areas
- Resilience to extreme events and longer-term climatic change
- Standards and design codes to support infrastructure resilience
How will we know if we are getting it right?
If we get our collaboration right, now and in the future, we will hope to see the joint adoption of a Manifesto for Resilient Infrastructure, which will serve as guiding principles for risk-informed investments in infrastructure, on a global scale.
A key barrier to enhancing resilience in infrastructure has been the mispricing of climate risk in investment decision making. This has created a false sense that resilient infrastructure is a cost burden. The ultimate goal of our theme at COP26 is to empower relevant stakeholders (national and sub-national governments and decision makers, multilateral organizations, non-profits and private sector organizations and financial institutions) by jointly agreeing to and adopting a Manifesto for Resilient Infrastructure to advance its cause in the global discourse. The manifesto will serve as guiding principles for coordinated efforts and targeted actions in making risk-informed decisions in the creation and management of infrastructure systems around the world.
The full programme will be launched shortly, along with the event platform and registration. Sign up using the form on this site and we’ll update you as it goes live.