The Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership was started by UNEP in 2018 as a platform to promote and support integrated approaches to sustainable infrastructure planning and development. Such approaches recognize the centrality of infrastructure to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and can help to deliver optimal social, environmental, and economic outcomes of infrastructure development by considering the complex interlinkages between different infrastructure systems, sectors, phases, governance structures, and aspects of sustainability. In collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders, the Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership provides knowledge, facilitates international collaboration, and supports capacity building at the country-level to foster systems-level approaches, which more fully exploit the complex interlinkages between infrastructure and the SDGs.
In promoting integrated approaches and implementing the UNEA resolution on sustainable infrastructure, the Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership has three core goals:
a) raise awareness about the centrality of infrastructure for the 2030 Agenda.
b) develop streamlined normative and technical guidance to scale up the application and the integration of existing tools and approaches - and the development of new ones - in support of sustainable infrastructure.
c) strengthen the technical and institutional capacity of developing countries to adopt and apply upstream, macro-level, integrated approaches to infrastructure development in support of their national sustainable development objectives and the 2030 Agenda.
Fostering Dialogue: The SIP has an ongoing series of public events and lectures to raise awareness on the topic of sustainable infrastructure.
1) Infrastructure innovations as solutions to Environmental Challenges with Prof. Spiro Pollalis (Harvard University), An evidence-based approach to resilient, sustainable infrastructure with Steven Crosskey (UNOPS) and Scott Thacker (University of Oxford/UNOPS).
2) Geneva Forum for Sustainable Infrastructure in collaboration with WWF, IUCN and the University of Geneva to share experiences on up-to-date science and policy tools for informing infrastructure development globally, and followed up in October 2018 with an expert meeting on integrated approaches, co-hosted with Fujian Normal University and the University of Geneva.
Knowledge Products: The SIP is launching a series of thematic papers to facilitate knowledge exchange concerning the nexuses between sustainable infrastructure and critical environmental issues.
Expert Working Group: Under a Global Environment Facility (GEF)-funded project, UNEP has convened an Expert Working Group (EWG) to take stock of existing normative guidance on sustainable infrastructure, identify gaps, and develop a consolidated, streamlined, internationally applicable Good Practice Guidance Framework on integrated approaches.
Capacity Building: The SIP has several ongoing country activities to build capacity to develop sustainable infrastructure in support of the SDGs.
Events:
To set the stage for the 2021 IUCN World Conservation Congress, the Infrastructure and Nature coalition organised a series of discussions with leading private and public sector actors on the financing, planning, and development of sustainable infrastructure that will explore solutions for reducing risks and generating incentives for building nature into future infrastructure business models.
Partners and stakeholders
The Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership works with a broad network of partner organisations including UNIDO, UNDP, World Bank, OECD, UNECE, UNOPS, IUCN, WWF, and the University of Geneva, ITRC at Oxford University.
Furthermore, the Partnership actively supports interagency collaboration through the UN Environment Management Group (EMG). On February 26th 2019, it co-organised an EMG Nexus Dialogue as an interagency platform to raise awareness, mobilise expertise and support countries in the implementation of upstream, system-level approaches to infrastructure. Outcomes of this dialogue and further steps will be communicated soon.
As a contribution to the G20 DWG and in collaboration with ILO, UNDP, UNECE, UNIDO, UNITAR and UNOPS, UN Environment's Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership has recently issued an interagency statement on integrated approaches to the development of sustainable and resilient infrastructure for the delivery of the 2030 Agenda.
For more information please contact Rowan Palmer (rowan.palmer@un.org)