Future Proofing Infrastructure to Address the Climate Biodiversity and Pollution Crises: GEO for Business Brief 5

• Main Author: United Nations Environment Programme
• Other Authors: Science Division
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: CLIMATE CHANGE; POLLUTION; BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/37563

Infrastructure is both impacted by and impacts the environment in various feedback loops. Between 1998 and 2017, climate-related disasters accounted for 91 per cent of all recorded disasters, with floods being 43 per cent of these events, affecting 2 billion people, mostly in Asia and Africa. In the future, extreme events are expected to have more severe impacts on infrastructure, such as: sea level rise, caused by ocean warming and sea ice melt, which will damage protective walls, create more flooding and saltwater intrusions, and inundate low-lying coastal cities temperature increases on land, which will accelerate the ageing of infrastructure through heatwaves and changes in freeze-thaw patterns resulting in further infrastructure degradation wildfires, which will increase in frequency and intensity, damaging infrastructure in their wake, and hurricanes and cyclones, which will increase in frequency and intensity, damaging or destroying infrastructure with the financial cost borne by national economies and the insurance industry