How public-private partnerships can save governments $200bn a year in infrastructure damage

Our infrastructure systems increasingly need to resist and recover from the effects of climate change.

The Canadian Climate Institute estimates that the cost of weather-related infrastructure failures now accounts for between 5% and 6% of annual GDP growth.

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction notes that while direct infrastructure damage costs around $200bn each year, the indirect cost is over $2.3tn.

Infrastructure engineers understand the impact of what they build better than anyone.

Putting climate resilience at the heart of infrastructure development safeguards essential services for communities, reduces economic losses, and supports sustainable development by minimising the need for costly repairs.

It’s about more than simply adapting to projected climate effects. It’s about ensuring continued service and relevance. It’s about protecting whole-life value.

The transition to resilient infrastructure systems faces two main challenges. One is updating ageing infrastructure to meet changing needs. The other is the growing gap in funding and financing to support it.

Embedding climate resilience in public-private partnerships

In September 2024, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) launched an international expert panel to investigate how public-private partnerships (PPPs) can contribute.

The work provides policy recommendations and best practices to help public authorities incorporate adaptation and resilience when using PPPs to plan, develop, and implement infrastructure projects.

The panel published its findings in October 2025 and presented them at the 10th UNECE International PPP Forum in Barcelona in April 2026. The final guidelines came out in August and are due for review next month.

So, what do the guidelines tell us?

The guidelines highlight the importance of PPPs in helping countries create the infrastructure they need, and ensuring that infrastructure can cope with the demands of climate change.

It’s pragmatic. It boils down international best practice with clear concepts, applications, and supporting case studies.

Focused on delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 13 on climate action, it emphasises the critical importance of resilient infrastructure that delivers long-term value throughout its lifecycle.

A consistent theme is the need to understand and manage risk properly from the outset of a project through to its delivery. Doing so early can reduce insurance and financing costs and improve access to credit.

This kind of evidence-based, whole-life assessment is something that institutional investors such as pension funds have long sought, but only engineers can deliver, because they best understand the risks climate change poses to infrastructure.

An emphasis on whole-life risk management

The draft guidelines include several actions that help integrate climate resilience in PPP financing.

But the core message is simple: resilience shouldn’t be an afterthought. It all begins at the earliest stages of the project.

Readers might find some common themes with the Enabling Better Infrastructure (EBI) programme and Project 13.

All three frameworks encourage decision makers to focus on long-term performance and involve a wide range of stakeholders when planning and delivering infrastructure.

The three frameworks are complementary. Where they differ is in what they’re designed to do.

EBI helps governments identify gaps, target investments, and create long-term infrastructure strategies. Project 13 encourages infrastructure owners, partners, advisors, and suppliers to work together towards a set of shared outcomes.

EBI is about strategy. Project 13 is about delivery.

With a focus on climate resilience that spans both strategy and delivery, the UNECE guidelines fit conceptually somewhere between the two. The UNECE’s interest in evidenced risk management continues through the life of the project, from financing and design to operation and maintenance.

EBI helps governments identify what infrastructure they need. Project 13 helps organisations collaborate to deliver it. The UNECE guidelines help governments embed climate resilience across the whole process.

Taking climate action

Engineers around the world have done considerable work on climate-resilient infrastructure.

By learning from each other's successes and failures, the infrastructure professions can build a shared understanding of what works.

The guidance doesn’t promote a single doctrine. Rather, it offers a conceptual framework to adapt to local situations and requirements.

While this isn’t a new idea, it’s one that’s easily lost as nations and associations seek to establish best practice for their particular time and situation.

It’s a reminder that best practice isn’t fixed: like a rigid system, it adapts and evolves over time as circumstances change.

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