Introduction: The Unique Responsibility of Infrastructure
Infrastructure shapes civilisation. When archaeologists dig up ancient ruins, one of the indicators of civilisations is the existence of roads, water supply systems, or buildings. This highlights the longevity of infrastructure and buildings—it often outlasts civilisations!
A highway built today shapes air quality and land use for generations. A power plant constructed now locks in emission pathways for decades or more. In short, the decisions made today shape environmental impact for the next few decades. As such, environmental considerations for infrastructure projects cannot remain discretionary or a procedural formality.
Yet, most current assessment frameworks treat environmental impact as an item on the checklist, instead of a key binding constraint. Projects are commonly judged primarily on financial, technical or even political considerations; environmental effects are normally noted but rarely factored and quantified in the main decision pathway.
The consequence? The global infrastructure portfolio that locks in environmental degradation at scale. Today, 13.7 million deaths annually are linked to environmental causes. Much of this can be traced back to infrastructure decisions made decades ago—decisions that seemed rational at the time but failed to account for full, long-term environmental costs.
This is not a call to halt infrastructure development. It is a call to fundamentally restructure how environmental impact is assessed and quantified.
The Current Framework of Decisions and Opportunities
Most infrastructure investment decisions follow a structured framework with four core stages:
Stage 1: Strategic Need
Assess the project's social, economic, and security rationale. Why is this infrastructure required?
Strategic need is typically framed around immediate capacity gaps, economic development targets, or political commitments. A new highway addresses current congestion. A power plant meets projected energy demand. Analysis horizons often extend only a few decades into the future (commonly around 20–30 years), with environmental considerations framed around compliance rather than optimisation.
We don't ask whether this infrastructure approach is environmentally optimal among alternatives, only whether it's socially or economically justified, and whether it’s technically or financially feasible.
Idea / Food for Thought
In assessing the economic cost, can the cost and benefit to the environment be factored in? Be it a direct environmental cost or an indirect environmental cost.
Stage 2: Business Case & Viability Assessment
Evaluate value for money, cost-benefit analysis, and long-term financial feasibility.
Current business cases excel at calculating economic and financial costs and returns. Economic impact is assessed by quantifying direct, indirect, and induced economic impact, while financial viability is modelled with interest rate scenarios, operational expenses, maintenance cycles, and revenue projections with sophisticated calculations.
Environmental and public health costs, however, are often externalised from these calculations rather than treated as core liabilities. Impacts on air quality, ecosystems, climate, and communities are acknowledged, but seldom (if any) integrated into the project’s underlying value assessment. Excuse being: they are not quantifiable. As a result, current frameworks cannot determine whether apparent economic gains truly outweigh long-term environmental and societal costs, allowing projects to appear profitable while generating a net loss for society through environmental degradation.
Idea / Food for Thought
It is strange that while economic impact can be quantified clearly from direct to indirect induced outcomes, environmental impact cannot be quantified, even at the direct or indirect level. For example, it is clear that air pollution has health implications, thereby increasing healthcare costs and reducing productivity, and eventually reducing life expectancy. The healthcare costs and productivity can at least be quantified, while life expectancy is arguably priceless, depending on who you ask, but it can still be economically quantified.
Can there be a benchmark cost per unit of emission or pollution? Arguably, this figure may differ from place to place.
Stage 3: Delivery Strategy
Delivery strategies define how a project is implemented, including procurement, construction, and operations over the asset’s design life.
Current frameworks consider whole-life financial and operational costs, but environmental and societal impacts are often sidelined, limited to regulatory compliance such as permits or emissions standards.
But compliance is a floor, not a ceiling. Meeting minimum requirements set under the law or regulations does not constitute environmental performance—it constitutes environmental permission.
Idea / Food for Thought
Is it possible that the procurement or design phase considers and takes into account the lifecycle cost of all factors?
Stage 4: Investment Decision
Make the final Go/No-Go decision based on strategic alignment, business case, and delivery readiness.
Investment decisions weigh between strategic fit, financial returns, technical feasibility, and political support. Environmental factors inform this decision but rarely constrain it. A project with strong economic and political backing proceeds even when environmental impacts are significant—because those impacts are treated as manageable externalities rather than fundamental viability questions.
Environmental performance is assessed after the strategic need, business case, and delivery strategy are determined. It shapes the project at the margins but doesn't determine the fundamentals of the solutions at all.
In short, it does not shape the question: is there a better way (socially, environmentally, economically, technically) to solve the problem we are trying to solve?
The Scale of Impact
This framework produces large and lasting environmental consequences—not because infrastructure is uniquely harmful, but because it is large, resource-intensive, and persistent.
The numbers are unambiguous:
- Energy and emissions: The built environment accounts for 32–34% of global energy consumption and CO₂ emissions
- Resource extraction: Infrastructure drives up to 40% of global material consumption—sand, gravel, steel, cement, timber. Material choices made at design determine the embodied carbon locked in structures for decades
- Water stress: Construction activities account for 15% of global freshwater withdrawals, with runoff affecting rivers and aquifers for decades
- Biodiversity loss: The built environment contributes up to 30% of biodiversity loss globally through habitat conversion and fragmentation
Why Voluntary Action Fails
Infrastructure developers compete on thin margins, tight timelines, and managed risks. They respond to incentive structures created by regulation and procurement rules. When environmental safeguards are voluntary, projects minimising harm appear more expensive or slower—unless rules level the playing field.
In systems where impacts are not quantified:
- Firms factoring in environmental costs lose bids to competitors
- Environmental damage becomes a competitive advantage
- Best practice remains the exception, not the norm