Nature-Positive Infrastructure: Mainstreaming Biodiversity Across the Transportation Lifecycle

About this Event

Transportation infrastructure is essential for economic development, regional integration, and access to services. However, roads, railways, waterways, and ports are also among the leading drivers of habitat loss, ecosystem fragmentation, and biodiversity decline. Infrastructure expansion can disrupt wildlife movement, degrade ecosystems and ecosystem services, and increase pressures on sensitive natural areas. As countries continue to invest in connectivity and transport networks, there is a growing need to ensure that biodiversity considerations are integrated into infrastructure planning and decision-making from the earliest stages.

The Greening Transportation Infrastructure Development (GRID) Integrated Program was established to support this transition toward nature-positive infrastructure development. Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and led by WWF in partnership with UNEP and the Asian Development Bank, GRID promotes integrated planning approaches that balance transportation needs with biodiversity conservation and ecosystem resilience. Through national projects and a global knowledge platform, the programme supports governments, development partners, financial institutions, and practitioners in strengthening policies, planning processes, technical capacity, and decision-making tools that can help mainstream biodiversity into transportation infrastructure development.

This event explored how biodiversity considerations can be systematically embedded across the transportation infrastructure lifecycle, from strategic planning and investment decisions to design, procurement, construction, operation, and maintenance. Building on emerging experiences from GRID and broader international practice, speakers will discuss the policy, institutional, technical, and financial measures needed to advance nature-positive infrastructure development. The discussion highlighted practical opportunities for governments, development banks, conservation organizations, and the private sector to work together in ensuring that future transportation investments contribute to both sustainable development and biodiversity goals.

Speakers

By order of intervention

Kate NEWMAN

Vice President, Sustainable Infrastructure and Public Sector Initiatives, WWF

Evan FREUND

Senior Director, Sustainable Infrastructure, Forests, WWF

Rowan PALMER

Programme Management Officer, Infrastructure Unit, UN Environment Programme

Liesbeth CASIER

Lead, Public Procurement and Sustainable Infrastructure, International Institute for Sustainable Development

Diana RIZZOLIO

Coordinator, Geneva Environment Network | Moderator

Highlights

Video

Live from Palais des Nations

Summary

Rowan PALMER | Programme Management Officer, Infrastructure Unit, UN Environment Programme

• When we are talking about nature-positive infrastructure, we refer to two main aspects. The first is limiting negative impacts on nature from infrastructure that we build and operate. This is maybe the more obvious of the two. We know that all infrastructure has some impacts on nature, either through the resources that are used to build it, through the footprint of where it is actually built, as well as through the types of activities that it enables and incentivizes.
• The other side of the coin is that, aside from limiting negative impacts, it is also about working with nature to help deliver infrastructure services.
• For the second point, we need to consider that infrastructure systems are comprised of three main components. We have the built environment, and this is typically what everyone thinks about when they think about infrastructure: the stuff we build out of concrete and steel and what have you.
• Then we also have the natural environment, or sometimes referred to as green infrastructure or natural infrastructure. Here, we are talking about landscapes and ecosystems, or elements of them, that either deliver or contribute to the delivery of infrastructure services.
• When nature is involved in the delivery of infrastructure services, we use the term nature-based infrastructure, or NbI for short.
• Then the third part of the system is the enabling environment. These are the institutions, the policies, the knowledge, the people that work together to manage and enable the different parts of the system to work together and deliver the services that we need.

• The paper identifies five functions through which it does this.

1. By delivering services directly.
2. By enhancing or complementing service delivery by a built asset.
3. The nature-based components can protect other assets from impacts of climate change and other disasters.
4. It can also provide benefits to the people working on infrastructure, and so this helps improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery.
5. Then we have the co-benefits, so multiple additional co-benefits. These are all the other benefits you get out of the natural components of the system that are not necessarily related to infrastructure services themselves. So, biodiversity benefits, employment and livelihood benefits, et cetera.

• When we map all of this service delivery against the SDGs, we find that nature-based infrastructure can contribute to 79% of the SDG targets across all 17 goals. When combined with built infrastructure, that influence rises to 95% overall.
• Then when we look in any particular sector, the influence is a little more pronounced. By combining nature-based infrastructure with grey infrastructure at the sector level, the influence- the benefits you get out of it- can increase the SDG targets that are influenced by anywhere from 24 to 47%, depending on the sector.
• There are also strong linkages with the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Nature-based infrastructure can influence three of the four long-term goals and 16 of the 23 targets, as well as contributing to both mitigation and adaptation objectives under the Paris Agreement.
• This kind of strong influence across the SDGs and the Rio Conventions shows the cross-cutting impacts, positive and negative, that infrastructure can have. This really means that we need to work with and engage a wide range of partners and stakeholders, trying to make the most of our infrastructure development.

Kate NEWMAN | Vice President, Sustainable Infrastructure and Public Sector Initiatives, WWF

• WWF is working to ensure a future in which natural infrastructure- those woods you see on the side- are holding water, protecting flows, and providing pollination and habitat for wildlife. A lot of services that humans need, and we call that natural infrastructure.
• Then these intact systems that we rely on are conserved and maintained with effort. They do not just persist on their own without humanity making an effort to preserve and maintain natural infrastructure.
• Then we have to always look at the infrastructure that we build. Of course, we know that humanity needs a lot more infrastructure in many parts of the world than it has right now. As you were just seeing with the SDGs, in order to meet development needs, infrastructure is inevitable and important, and everybody appreciates good, solid, safe infrastructure.
• Yet is it possible to achieve that need and meet the aspirations of all populations, but at the same time maintain and restore the biodiversity that has been declining and unfortunately is continuing to decline around the world, causing challenges to humanity in turn, in terms of our needs on this Earth for pollination, water, and so on?
• It is a cycle that we need to fix, where the infrastructure is delivered in harmony with the natural systems to avoid ecosystem damage and degradation, and then minimize greenhouse gas emissions and, in fact, sequester greenhouse gas emissions to help solve climate change issues.
• This is a vision that we have of getting involved.
• The various estimates say that about 75% more infrastructure will be around us by 2050 to meet our needs and our aspirations. That means all that we see is just 25% of what is coming ahead. But it is not here yet. So, in this time between now and when that sort of tsunami of new infrastructure happens, we have time and an increasing understanding of what it takes to actually build infrastructure that is built in harmony with our natural systems, and not only in harmony, but actually contributes to restoring biodiversity, to taking that curve and turning it back up so that we actually bring back the biodiversity that we need and that we want and that we value for its own intrinsic value on Earth.
• The interesting thing about infrastructure I find is that it is a pretty consistently managed process. It does not necessarily change very much if you are talking about a road or a monstrous dam. You will still generally follow this, what they call the infrastructure project life cycle.
• At each point along this flow, there are things you can do to enhance and help with the contribution to biodiversity and, of course, do no harm.
• We have examined this life cycle pretty carefully. In the earliest stages, where there is green, darker green is where the ideas come about. We ought to have a road, and the policies are in place about, well, we should only put roads here and they should be built to this level of safety, and we need X many roads and plus railroads in order to meet the vision of our future.
• You see a lot of interest in economic corridors. That is the economic priorities that are being set. Then, further downstream, projects are then designed, procurement strategy is defined, the design is invested in, and then you have contracts put in place and land is acquired and communities are involved and physical structures are built.
• But you can imagine that anything down in that second half of the picture, there has already been a long investment in securing the financing, in figuring out the design, in having the consultations with communities. So, by the time you are in that latter half of the infrastructure life cycle, it is pretty much too late to have major impacts on the biodiversity.
• We have understood this through experience and advice from the professionals in this business that the most impact that you can have on the biodiversity outcomes eventually is when you work in this upstream space, on engaging in the policy dialogues.
• For example, the Convention on Migratory Species, in the past two COPs, has integrated very specific guidance on how to avoid your transportation or linear infrastructure impacting migratory species pathways.
• There are solutions, but they have to be built into the design, and they have to be identified as a priority in your policy environment, or the incentive is not there for the actual builders to take those steps.
• Another example is the Convention on Biological Diversity coming up in Yerevan. In the last COP, they focused on developing the mainstreaming component, and they explicitly talked about mainstreaming, including for infrastructure, and how you get any sector to think about how biodiversity is woven in from the earliest stage, from your transport to your water systems to your pipelines to your dams and so on.
• So mainstreaming became quite central for the CBD, and now it is time to give guidance on how to implement that. That is the sort of policy section up at the top.
• Then you move into the design phase, and there are many, many options when you are designing a road, say here, there, or elsewhere. Ideally, you use the mitigation hierarchy and you avoid putting that road through the last stretch of intact habitat that you might have in your country.
• It might be a little more expensive to go around, but you will actually be maintaining a healthy ecosystem and actually securing more biodiversity in your country over time by avoiding some of those precious, critical areas.
• But if you cannot avoid, there are lots of ways to mitigate the damage and then actually turn biodiversity positive, contribute to biodiversity restoration, and all that has to be embedded in that early stage.
• We will talk a little bit more later about how that affects the actual procurement phase, which is when the two colors change. You can make a lot of difference pre-procurement, but after the tender document has been secured, it is really hard to make changes.
• So upstream is critical for having an impact, and in particular, transportation is a very interesting sector. It is across landscapes. So you have not just one habitat being affected by one project, one road. A road may go through many habitats and have lots of impact quite separate in each of these patches of habitat.
• The amount of roads is increasing dramatically. Continents like Africa are experiencing a big road development process. There are a lot of economic corridors that are often connecting mines to ports and so on. And there will be railroads and roads.
• Then there is the relationship to emissions. Of course, transport is one of the most important sectors releasing greenhouse gases in the world, 19%. So that is a huge portion, along with agriculture. They are the two big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, unfortunately.
• And then the fragmentation you are seeing in this picture is dramatic, but it is a real challenge now. We are seeing habitats that are globally, there are only 7% of patches of intact habitat larger than 100 kilometers, which is like the size of Paris.
• That means most habitats on Earth have at least one road cutting through, which brings people, which brings settlements, which brings cattle, which brings disease spillover. So fragmentation is one of the most important issues that we are concerned with.
• Then the coastal wetlands and coastal systems in general, you have the pollution issue coming out from the land, but also overuse of the system is impeding things like turtles being able to find their way home.
• But then losing your wetlands and your deltas is also harming your agricultural capacity to develop, and taking over for tourism or removing your natural infrastructure like mangroves is reducing your ability to address critical disasters like cyclones.
• Each of these addresses different aspects of maintaining biodiversity, but transportation as a sector is one of the most impactful. Therefore, we have had the privilege of getting resources from the Global Environment Facility to specifically look at how you can restore biodiversity in the transport sector, and Evan will help us with that.

To be continued.

Documents

• Presentations made during the event

Links

• GEF funded Greening Transportation Infrastructure Development (GRID)

Directions to Palais des Nations, Room S-29

Play

Photo Gallery

Photo Credit

© Getty Images | Artur Debat / WWF-US