Empowering local people to engineer their own futures: a new infrastructure planning approach
Image
Children in Nicaragua after receiving school supplies as part of the UNICEF response to Hurricanes Eta and Iota.
Climate change is challenging our status quo as the frequency of extreme weather events keeps increasing. Water scarcity could cost some regions up to 6% of GDP and floods could force hundreds of millions of people from their homes by 2050. At the same time, we’re facing a $15 trillion infrastructure finance gap.
If these challenges weren’t enough, the COVID-19 crisis reminds us that a shift in our economic development paradigm is urgent.
26 May 2021 9:00
This introductory session to the K4D Learning Journey on International Nature will broadly introduce the interrelationship/integration between biodiversity, ecosystems, ecosystem services, human activity, and climate change. It will highlight how human activity is driving ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss in combination with climate change, as well as the relationship between biodiversity and climate change and how the dynamics of each are mutually reinforcing.
The session will make the case that to take action on climate change, biodiversity and poverty reduction, we need to protect, conserve and restore Nature, drawing on key arguments around the urgency and scale of the problem. It will define Nature interventions, which include Nature-based Solutions.
Smallholder farmers in Africa are subject to many risks, some of them made worse by climate change. Well-targeted weather forecasts and crop insurance can help to limit losses and improve food security. It makes sense to link both services.
Here’s a startling figure: 1.5 billion people will live in African cities by 2050, more than double the number today. African cities including unplanned urban areas and informal settlements are already facing staggering challenges: poverty, the need for more and better jobs, and a lack of housing and basic infrastructure, all of which will be compounded by rapid urban growth.
Yet, in our experience, one of the biggest risks facing cities across Africa is not well understood: water insecurity.
Inequitable access to basic water services, loss of natural water systems, unplanned urban expansion, and more frequent and intense droughts and floods will undermine the security, well-being and development prospects of Africa’s urban dwellers 60% of whom live in slums.
This commentary was produced by the World Resources Institute, as a managing partner of the Global Commission on Adaptation.
No matter where you are, your country’s leaders are figuring out how to rebuild from the economic and social shocks brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Imagine if those leaders used this moment to pivot away from the resource-hungry economic model that drove last century’s growth toward a more resilient approach that works with nature rather than against it. Imagine if your government proposed a stimulus package that included significant investments in protecting and restoring ecosystems that underpin your economy along with low-carbon, climate-resilient approaches to energy, construction, and transport.