3 Reports Present Case Studies Highlighting Climate Resilience

The increasing frequency of wildfires, floods, and droughts is alarming.

We’re witnessing airports shut down due to flooding, disrupted transportation, hydroelectric dams because of low river levels, and infrastructure like ports, bridges, and roads being damaged by storms and landslides.

Rising sea levels and coastal erosion gradually compromise properties, making them uninsurable and prompting entire communities to relocate. As a result, these concerns are becoming a routine headline, highlighting the urgent impact of climate change.

Wildfires, flooding, droughts, airports closed due to floods, transportation and hydroelectric dams disrupted due to low river levels, ports, bridges, and roads damaged by storms and landslides, rising sea levels and coastal erosion slowly eating away at properties, rendering them uninsurable and forcing communities to move out, etcetera—news like these is becoming more commonplace as climate change effects are escalating.

The World Meteorological Organization reports that the year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record, with the global average temperature of January to September 2024 at 1.54°C above the pre-industrial level. The year is also set to be the first to breach 1.5°C.

UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2024, which takes stock of countries’ promises to tackle climate change compared with what is needed, finds the world faces as much as 3.1 °C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100 if governments do not take more significant action on cutting GHG emissions. This level of warming is more than double what was agreed upon by 196 countries nearly a decade ago in The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change.

Rising GHG emissions due to continuous burning and investment in fossil fuels, rising temperatures, and their impact on people’s lives, livelihoods, the economy, and society due to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme events pose a question of how we can adapt to keep our communities, economies, assets, and infrastructure operating safely and continue thriving in a changing world.

The Climate Resilient Infrastructure Report series

The Climate Resilient Infrastructure Report series was produced by the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI), a global non-profit dedicated to engineering a more sustainable, just, and resilient future.

The first report was launched in May 2023 to report progress on climate-resilient infrastructure and showcase best practice case studies and initiatives worldwide.

The report series contributes directly to the UNFCCC Race to Resilience campaign, which seeks to catalyse action by nonstate actors to build the resilience of 4 billion people from vulnerable groups and communities to climate risks by 2030. The report is presented by the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI), a global non-profit dedicated to engineering a more sustainable, just, and resilient future.

The first of the annual report series, “The Climate Resilient Infrastructure Report: A Focus on Implementation,” reports progress on implementing climate resilient infrastructure and showcases curated best practice case studies and initiatives from around the world that have the potential to deliver change at scale and pace. 

Examples include New York City’s East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project, China’s community-based water stewardship, and upgrading critical road infrastructure along the Berbera Corridor in the Horn of Africa, among many others. These case studies each showcase ways to deliver solutions for infrastructure that uplift nature instead of dominating it, put human well-being at its core, and build climate resilience and adaptation.

This is the second issue in the three-report series “The Climate Resilient Infrastructure Report: A Focus on Nature.” It highlights the using nature-based solutions (NbS) in infrastructure, emphasising its synergy with the natural environment. NbS delivers wider benefits to society, the economy, and the environment, ranging from carbon sequestration to economic co-benefits and biodiversity.

The report spotlights 20 project examples, knowledge products, and collaborative initiatives selected from across the globe, representing a variety of sectors and geographies. These projects showcase best practice examples of infrastructure that incorporates, complements, and/or enhances natural systems, elevating the agenda for resilience and climate adaptation across infrastructure sectors, including social infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.

The third report in the series, “The Climate Resilient Infrastructure Report: A Focus on Technology“, showcases platforms, tools and emerging digital technologies that advance climate-resilient infrastructure and projects and initiatives that have incorporated them.

The report explores how digital technologies can enhance climate resilience and adaptation decision-making using the resilience phases: prepare, respond, recover, and adapt as framing.  At each phase, digital technology has proven crucial to advancing innovations that increase infrastructure robustness, adaptability, and safety in the face of climate challenges.

With over 50 contributions, the report highlights case studies that elevate the agenda for resilience and adaptation across all infrastructure sectors and showcase best practice examples of technology applications that build resilience and sustainability. It features tools, approaches, resources, and capacity-building initiatives that can empower practitioners and local communities to embrace and harness technology to advance climate-resilient infrastructure.

These three reports hope that each case study will serve as a blueprint for climate-compatible, people-centred transformations across infrastructure sectors.