First Expert Working Group Meeting on Sustainable Infrastructure

On 20-21 May 2019, UN Environment and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are hosting the First Expert Working Group Meeting on Sustainable Infrastructure in Gland, Switzerland.

In March 2019, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) passed a resolution on sustainable infrastructure (UNEP/EA.4/L.6) that recognizes infrastructure's centrality to the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. Among other things, it requests that UN Environment prepare a report on best practices for sustainable infrastructure, drawing on the wide body of existing normative guidance and identifying any gaps in the existing knowledge.

In response to UNEA Resolution 4/6, UN Environment has convened an Expert Working Group to lead the work on this task. While there are many existing tools, approaches, standards, guidelines, norms, and other forms of guidance that can be used to support assessment and decision-making for infrastructure development, there is currently no one set of internationally applicable guidance that countries can to use to support their planning and development of sustainable infrastructure.

To address this gap, the Expert Working Group will produce a consolidated normative guidance document for integrated approaches to the planning and development of sustainable infrastructure. The document will seek to develop a set of overarching principles that can be applied to inform sustainable infrastructure policymaking at the global level, while acknowledging that diverse national situations and circumstances call for tailored approaches that can be developed in alignment with these.

In developing this document, the Expert Working Group will be guided by the need to mainstream and upstream sustainability concerns in national infrastructure planning cycles, and to support integrated, cross-sectoral infrastructure planning and development at the macro-level. The Expert Working Group will operate under the umbrella of UN Environment's Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership, and will build upon the recent Geneva Forum for Sustainable Infrastructure, the UN Environment Management Group's Nexus Dialogue on Sustainable Infrastructure, and other relevant ongoing forums and partner organizations' work.

For further information, please contact Mr. Rowan Palmer ([email protected]).