Resilient Infrastructure & The Circular Economy
By Phil Fieldhouse
November 2020
Last month, in the article ‘Resilience in Infrastructure’ we explored how infrastructure can be designed with the knowledge that climate change is happening. This month we explore circular economy principles and how they influence infrastructure design.
We have established [link to previous article] that current infrastructure is insufficient for the demands of future society and climate change. Reducing carbon is central to reducing the pace of climate change and the severity of its effects, but it is not enough to simply aim to mitigate climate change by reducing carbon. We need to go further.
Climate Change Resilience and The Circular Economy
One key concept of the circular economy is to design regenerative systems that keep all resources within the system – ideally – in perpetuity. There are technical hurdles to overcome and achieve this as a reality, but how does this relate to infrastructure?
Infrastructure of the future should be able to cope with the effects of climate change and continue to perform to an appropriate standard during such events. This commands a level of dynamism and adaptability. How can a fixed asset change how it performs under different circumstances? How do we design infrastructure that can adapt to future needs and climate? Is it possible to design infrastructure as a regenerative asset, in line with circular economy principles?
To achieve this would be to achieve the gold standard of resilience. The answers to these questions are commanding more and more attention each day.
Green Grey Infrastructure
As an Environmental and Sustainability Consultant, I work closely with Emily Corwin, who is the Director of Nature-Based Engineering Solutions at Conservation International. They are an NGO that empowers people to protect nature to preserve the fragile systems we rely upon. Emily has drawn together a community of professionals worldwide that believe that not only is adaptive infrastructure possible, but that it has been silently working in the background all along.
Nature and its ecosystems provide a wealth of services we rely upon, from food to flood resistance to oxygen and water. However, as we’ve developed and built, we have removed these ecosystems and replaced them with our urban environment. Now we’re trying to protect our urban environments and way of life from climate change with more hard engineering, and less nature.
Recognising this problem, Emily founded the Global Green Grey Community of Practice. The community is a group of leaders in the engineering, finance and conservation worlds that recognise the need to collaborate and replicate nature in our human-built environments. The community recognises the ‘green’ ecosystems that perform a similar function to hard engineering ‘grey’ infrastructure, and is researching the ways and means by which we can fuse the two together. Initial findings are indicating that this works, and that the sum of parts is greater than the whole. Bringing together professionals globally from traditionally segregated industries is providing unique insights into this emerging field, and is adding weight to the notion that nature and development can co-exist and complement each other. All the while solving some of the biggest problems society is facing.
Regenerative Infrastructure
Given a fighting chance, ecosystems are naturally adaptive to their environment and established ecosystems are consistently valued more highly than new ones, for example when comparing ancient woodland versus newly planted forest. Questions remain around how best to finance this research and the eventual solutions, as well as how to manage the levels of stakeholder engagement needed as well as what engineering standards are required to appropriately design such infrastructure.
About the Author
Phil Fieldhouse is an independent Environmental and Sustainability Consultant specialising in resilient nature-based infrastructure. He is a core member of the Global Green Grey Infrastructure Community of Practice and UK Ambassador of Nature-Based Solutions for Global Ocean Trust. If you would like to know more, please email Phil@sustainables.me.
© 2020 Climate Just Collective