Rethinking infrastructure for the future

The Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were both adopted in 2015. As illustrated by the Connect4Climate infographic, the implementation timing of the instruments is closely related and there are a lot of synergies between nationally determined contributions to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050 under the Paris Agreement and 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to be reached by 2030.

Infrastructure plays a key role in supporting the achievement of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement since it delivers essential services including energy, water, communications, healthcare and education. At the same time, infrastructure is also part of the problem since it a major source of GHG emissions and will be responsible for the biggest part of adaptation cost as illustrated in the table below (source: UNOPS 2021 report “infrastructure for climate action”)

Infrastructure and climate change
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Investment needs in the municipal waste facilities to comply with targets set by the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC

The Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC sets a target of 50 % of municipal waste to be recycled and prepared for reuse by 2020 in EU Member States, for at least four categories (i.e. paper, glass, metals, plastics) of waste. To this end, the EU budget strongly supported Members via Cohesion funds, Horizon 2020, LIFE, etc ( a total of EUR 4.9 billion was allocated by 17 EU Member States for the 2014-2020 period). EEA figure on the share of treatment methods of municipal wastes shows that very significant progress has been achieved over the 2004-2016 period .