Giving Compass' Take:

• The Rockefeller Foundation is taking steps to improve urban resilience infrastructure by setting an indsutry standard for resilience, and then building infrastructure that will meet community needs of the future.

• How will the threat of climate change impact infrastructure? How can investors and donors help urban planners with this project? 

• Read about building resilience in education from the effects of climate change.

Regardless of climate, infrastructure is a basic need for human survival.  By definition, infrastructure is the “basic physical and organizational structure needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”  Infrastructure is intended to provide communities with shelter, and serve as an engine to support continued economic growth.  But the world’s infrastructure is broken.

Despite $2.5 trillion of annual global spending on transport, power, water and telecom systems, our global infrastructure is currently inadequate to meet demand, susceptible to failure both in daily life and under hazard events, and highly inequitable in particular to poor or vulnerable communities.

Infrastructure needs are most acute in cities, where the population grows rapidly, development increasingly encroaches on the natural habitat needed to support life and livelihoods, CO2 emissions are rising and air quality standards are declining.  All of this impacts the most vulnerable communities.  It is estimated that $3.3 trillion of annual investment and multiple decades are needed to deliver the infrastructure to address basic human needs.  In its recent report, the Global Commission on Adaptation highlighted that climate-resilient infrastructure systems are one of the top six areas of investment required to adapt to a climate-uncertain future.

Delivering the ‘right’ kind of urban infrastructure requires an understanding of what cities need today and anticipating what they might need in the future.

In order to take action in delivering resilience infrastructure, The Rockefeller Foundation is taking two steps.  First, we are partnering with Meridiam, a specialized infrastructure investment fund manager, in a new approach to develop urban resilience infrastructure. The goal of this partnership is to create an industry standard for resilience infrastructure. This will include mitigating the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks of a project, meeting indicators from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, and ensuring that projects are tailored to resolve resilience challenges in individual communities.

Read the full article about urban resilience infrastructure by Elizabeth Yee and Stefanie Fairholme at The Rockefeller Foundation.