Nature-Positive Infrastructure: Connecting Communities – Safeguarding the Planet

When: 13:15 – 14:45 | 8 December 2022 

Where: CEE Meeting Room 510A

Hosted by the Infrastructure and Nature Coalition*

What: Why infrastructure must be included in the Global Biodiversity Framework 

Infrastructure is the fundamental human enterprise that we must get right, or risk undermining our biodiversity and sustainable development goals for generations to come.  It is time to rethink our infrastructure future and follow a new path toward biodiversity-positive practices that meet humanity’s aspirations while helping restore a thriving planet. 

Why the increasing focus on infrastructure? In nature, species and processes must be on the move to survive. It is all about flexibility, permeability, adaptability, and flows.  Infrastructure, on the other hand, trends in the opposite direction – toward impermeability, inflexibility, and permanence. Once in place, we rarely remove it, solidifying its continued impacts on nature’s ebbs and flows well into the future.  Since 75% of the built infrastructure we expect to see in 2050 does not yet exist, now is the time to get ahead of the curve and design a new era of equitable, biodiversity-positive, and climate-smart options.  Where, how and on whose behalf?  These are the fundamental questions of our time that we must get right for all new infrastructure to ensure the restoration of a healthy and thriving planet.  

The session will convey why it is of critical importance that this profoundly impactful sector is addressed in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.  Community leaders, financiers, planners, engineers, and ecologists from around the world will take a fresh look at how infrastructure and biodiversity are interconnected. They will share inspiring stories about solutions to address this enormous challenge. Getting there will require new voices, targeted research, innovation, policy shifts, and the political will for change and each panelist is currently playing a role in making this happen.  

With 3,700 new dams and over 15 million miles of new roads planned for the next decade, the GBF is arriving at precisely the right moment to drive new infrastructure norms in a nature-positive direction. Join for an exciting and eye-opening discussion on how the GBF can shape the future of infrastructure

*Infrastructure and Nature Coalition

African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Austrian Ministry of Transport, Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, European Investment Bank, French Development Agency (AFD), French Ministry for an Ecological and Solidary Transition, German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), Global Infrastructure Basel, Global Infrastructure Facility, Infrastructure and Ecology Network Europe, Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University, Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Minuartia, Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Duke University, Sinfranova LLC, Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, UNEP Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Environment Programme/ World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure