The executive summary highlights the urgent need to invest in resilient infrastructure, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where infrastructure deficits, climate risks, and weak governance converge. With over $700 billion in annual losses, resilience is essential to avoid stranded assets and service disruptions.
It introduces the Global Infrastructure Risk Model and Resilience Index (GIRI), showing LMICs face higher relative risks despite lower asset values. Nature-based Infrastructure Solutions (NbIS) offer cost-effective, sustainable alternatives to grey infrastructure. Financing gaps remain vast, requiring innovative approaches, national resilience strategies, and risk-informed investment pipelines. Mobilizing private capital, standardizing resilience metrics, and creating resilience asset classes are key.
Capturing the “resilience dividend”—economic, social, and environmental benefits—can shift resilience from cost to opportunity, guiding global infrastructure toward sustainability and equity.
Key points
- Infrastructure resilience reduces losses, boosts services, and drives development.
- LMICs face high risks, low investment, weak governance.
- Nature-based solutions offer cost-effective, sustainable infrastructure resilience alternatives.
- Climate change increases infrastructure risk, especially in vulnerable regions.
- Financial risk metrics clarify resilience dividends, guiding smarter investments.
- Resilience policies, pipelines, and funds attract essential private capital.