​Background​

Infrastructure is crucial to the functioning of societies and the growth of economies. It includes transport systems, power-generation facilities, water and sanitation networks, among others, and is foundational to human life. However, the world is currently operating with infrastructure designed for a population much smaller than today's 8 billion. This gap has resulted in significant global deficiencies: one-third of the population lacks access to essential services like electricity, safe drinking water, and sanitation, while half the world's population lacks internet access.

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The situation is set to worsen as the global population continues to grow and urbanize, increasing the demand for infrastructure. However, the development of new infrastructure has severe environmental impacts. Infrastructure projects often encroach on biodiverse areas, exacerbating climate change, pollution, and habitat destruction. Poor planning and inadequate environmental considerations during the development of infrastructure have led to irreversible damage to ecosystems and a significant decline in global biodiversity.

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The underlying problem is further compounded by several systemic issues, including the mismatch between decision-making scales, preference for cost-cutting, lack of early strategic planning, and inadequate participation of local communities and civil society in the planning processes. These issues are exacerbated by corruption, which leads to poorly planned and environmentally damaging infrastructure projects being approved and implemented.

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The Project

Mainstreaming biodiversity safeguards in infrastructure development procurement pipelines project aimed to address the critical environmental risks associated with infrastructure projects by introducing a methodology to improve the transparency, accountability, and environmental safeguards of infrastructure development. 

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Project Objectives

• Enhancing Data Transparency: Publish comprehensive and timely data on infrastructure projects and contracts to facilitate stakeholder assessment of environmental risks.

• Identifying Red Flags: Define and operationalize indicators, or 'red flags,' that signal potential risks to conservation throughout the infrastructure planning, procurement, and implementation stages.

• Improving Decision-Making: Utilize these red flags to guide decision-making throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring infrastructure projects are planned and executed with careful consideration of environmental impacts.

• Guiding Stakeholders: Provide clear guidance on applying data standards (OCDS and OC4IDS) to link project and contract information, fostering a more integrated approach to infrastructure governance and environmental conservation.

• Supporting Sustainable Procurement: Develop open data solutions and methodologies that incorporate conservation criteria into public procurement processes, promoting sustainable development that safeguards both people and the planet.​

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Final Product

Through this project, we developed a guide that offers clear guidance on a set of indicators designed to help stakeholders identify infrastructure risks, particularly those that affect nature. We identified 22 indicators as "red flags" for conservation, which highlight when something is wrong or missing in public infrastructure planning, procurement, or implementation processes, thereby posing risks to nature and the environment. For instance, a red flag would be raised if proposed project locations overlap with conservation areas or if specific conservation requirements are not explicitly included in tender criteria or are not accounted for in the tender process. These red flags indicate that nature has not been fully considered in the infrastructure planning or procurement stages.

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This final output can be accessed here.