Delegates at the Global Leadership Forum Summit in Geneva had an early morning start today with a breakfast briefing on investment led by Mike Haigh, sustainable infrastructure advisor at Mott MacDonald.
In a changing and increasingly uncertain world, the investment challenges for infrastructure are many and varied and addressing them is not a straightforward task. However, making the case for sustained and sustainable investment in projects was clearly vital for the future vitality of the industry.
So, what is holding investment back? The old favourites were mentioned – transparency and corruption, bureaucracy and skills shortages – and in addition the many justifiable and understandable calls on the public purse – like health – and also rising defence costs as a result of the war in Ukraine. Given that most of these are ‘baked in’ and areas over which the sector and engineers have little or marginal influence, where the sector could make a difference, like skills shortages, it needed to act positively.
The discussion raised the urgent need for the industry to make the case to governments to invest in green project preparation by putting more money into their planning and scoping. There are forward-thinking investors in the market that are developing and scaling solutions to address the drivers of climate change and tapping into innovation across sectors and markets to support a sustainable future. There was an opportunity for construction companies to work with those investors in making the case for greener infrastructure.
Given the ticking clock on net zero and the need to achieve the sustainable development goals, summit delegates saw an opportunity in using that need for urgent action to inspire more investment in projects that made a positive impact on the environment. There was also a need for the sector to leverage the increasing public discontent in many countries at the lack of action on climate change to ‘motivate rather than convince’ on the need for change.
Following the points made during this summit session, members of the Global Leadership Forum will undoubtedly return to the investment issue in the future, as without knowledgeable industry input those much-needed projects which make a positive difference might never happen.