Visioning Futures: Improving Infrastructure Planning to Harness Nature’s Benefits in a Warming World (hi-res)

While considerable progress is being made toward more low carbon, resilient infrastructure development, there are still major gaps in current planning approaches to be addressed to make progress against multiple goals in critical global agreements on climate, biodiversity, and sustainable development. Natural capital and ecosystem services continue to be undervalued and poorly understood, especially the benefits they provide in supporting resilience for people and infrastructure in a rapidly warming world.

This report (hi-res version), with support from GIZ, outlines a new planning approach integrating considerations of natural capital and ecosystem services, climate risks and resilience, and sustainable development needs to support social-ecological system scale planning. It provides key recommendations for global and local institutions influential in infrastructure development, from multilateral development banks and other funders to NGOs and the private sector, to address these gaps and facilitate an improved planning approach.