Description:

Kate Newman, Vice President, Forest and Freshwater Public Sector Initiatives and Nirmal Bhagabati, Ph.D at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) will present "Preparing for the global ‘Infrastructure Tsunami’: The Intersection Between Nature and Sustainable Infrastructure”

Kate will discuss global infrastructure challenges, gaps, and opportunities identified by WWF in the context of the world’s current drive toward sustainability. Countries have made commitments to meet global sustainability and climate goals that are now setting the stage for a new era in infrastructure. Nirmal will weave in a more technical overview of WWF’s application of natural capital assessment tools that inform spatial planning. He will describe how WWF has used spatial models of ecosystem services, land use change and climate to assess how infrastructure both impacts and depends on natural capital. This will include accounting for projected climate change impacts and ‘service sheds’ – the identification of ecosystem services to specific beneficiaries using GIS-based modeling tools, like INVEST. Theywill draw upon ongoing cases in Myanmar, India, Colombia, and Nepal to describe how these approaches have been used to inform infrastructure development. Kate and Nirmal will raise questions for engineers that WWF has been pondering regarding the practicalities engineers face when designing and developing infrastructure, and suggestions they may have on how to address these challenges sustainably.