Delivering Great Infrastructure that “pays forward” for our mokopuna
David Carter, Executive Chair and Regional Director - Asia, Beca
The term “infrastructure” conjures up many different things to different people. To some it refers to the roads and bridges that underpin our daily commute, to others water and wastewater services may be the first things to spring to mind. However, in its broadest sense, infrastructure can be thought of as the physical foundations that underpin our society – the systems and services that enable our communities to interact, connect, share ideas, innovate, aspire - essentially to prosper.
Throughout history, we have tended to marvel at the technical innovation of iconic pieces of infrastructure, think the Roman aqueducts, the Hoover Dam, the Sydney Opera House, along with celebrating the expertise and innovation of their “individual” designers. However, in more recent times the focus has rightly shifted to the societal outcomes that such infrastructure can deliver, as opposed to the physical form of the infrastructure itself. To be part of shaping the location and form, as well as being involved in the construction and decommissioning of infrastructure is both a privilege and a significant responsibility. While all pieces of infrastructure shape places, the ultimate goal of infrastructure must be to enhance communities. Hence the first step along this journey must involve working transparently, collaboratively and openly with both clients and the communities they intend to serve to both identify the need and the definition of success.
In August 2022, the Government released our first National Adaptation Plan which sets out policies and priority directions for infrastructure in Aotearoa. This Plan is a salient reminder of the scale of transformation we need to see in our society and the infrastructure demands that we expect to provide for current and future generations. From a review of that plan, it is clear that infrastructure is an essential ingredient to our future sustainable existence and that the scale of infrastructure needed to support our transition to a new low carbon community is significant. Aligned with this is the challenge of delivering infrastructure ‘sustainably’ and in a way that recognises and provides for future generations to thrive.
Our behaviours and endeavours over the last 1,000 or so years, but more particularly over the last 100 to 150 years, have had a dramatic impact on the landscape and waterways that surround us. So much so, that we have effectively “created” the conditions within which we live today. Infrastructure and our use of it has also played a significant part, as we have attempted to “tame” (any in many cases “exploit”) nature. Over this more recent period, in particular - our impact on planetary processes (e.g. geology, climate, ecosystems and biodiversity) has extended well beyond the ‘natural norms’, and we now face a future where our impacts seriously threaten the wellbeing of our planet’s natural systems as well as our own wellbeing.
As a consequence, the scale of the change we must now plan for is much more multi-dimensional. It is about guiding our cities, our ecosystems and our behaviours towards a net zero future – about reducing our current reliance on an emissions economy, and about reenvisaging the way we create the infrastructure “foundations” that as a society we need, so as to enable us to be resilient in a climate and world that is now changing at pace. As we face new demands for infrastructure – which will assist us to adapt and transition to the impacts of climate change - we need to think about how the delivery of such infrastructure can go beyond simply serving the present, to “pay forward” in such a way that enables our future generations and communities to flourish.
This is a challenge that we can certainly live up to, providing we apply our collective will and approach the design and delivery (of infrastructure) in different ways. It is not about halting development, as in many cases we will have to rely on innovation and “new” technologies to help reverse the changes that are already in train. However, in parallel it will require us to rethink how we evaluate what infrastructure is needed, where and the outcomes we want from it, and how we assess the ‘acceptable and unacceptable’ trade-offs when it comes to balancing the respective social, economic, cultural and environmental outcomes.
Assuming we share a genuine desire to see our mokopuna thrive, the impact on future generations must receive greater focus, starting now. Our decision-making models have, for many years, (unconsciously or consciously) reinforced the bias or weight of our consideration to “meeting our needs today”. Our more recent focus on the sustainability of infrastructure has sought to do this in a way that doesn’t limit future generations’ ability to do the same. However, despite following this process no matter how well intentioned, our natural capital continues to decline and therefore a more appropriate challenge might be, “what opportunities are we providing future generations to also prosper”.
To achieve this, it is critical that we adapt our processes to consider more holistically, ‘how infrastructure opportunities can better support the broader outcomes we need to seek’. In essence taking more ambitious steps to consider the opportunities we can leave for future generations.
Our purpose at Beca is ‘To make every day better’. As an intergenerational and employee-owned business we understand only too well the concept of guardianship, of honouring those who have gone before us, by continually reinvesting in the business such that we leave it in a stronger state than when it was gifted to us, enabling the measured transfer of ownership to future generations in a sustainable way. Ideally a legacy for our next hundred years but, ultimately that will be for our future generations of owners to decide. Notwithstanding, it is exactly these same principles that we seek to, apply to the infrastructure projects that we love delivering.
We will not always get it right but we are acutely aware of the pivotal role we must play – in conjunction with the whole infrastructure ecosystem – in supporting and enabling low carbon infrastructure. We also know that by collaborating behind an aligned vision, aspirational change is achievable. Assessing the carbon impact of projects is rapidly becoming common place and the size of the challenge ahead of us, i.e., to limit global warming to within 1.5 deg C, is becoming increasingly understood by all. However, while we may not yet fully appreciate the scale of change including personal change that will be required, defining the scale of the challenge is an essential first step.
One of the key planks that needs to be in place is industry-wide definitions of exactly what or how we think about ‘sustainable infrastructure’. We have a solid track record of considering the potential “impacts” of environmental issues: from mitigating planting and environmental works, through to reducing the scale of ‘embodied carbon’ (the carbon needed to build new infrastructure and society foundations). By taking the next step and applying a mindset of paying forward, the challenge would quickly turn to how delivery of infrastructure can be part of a regenerative solution for the environment and the communities it serves.
For infrastructure, the first step has been about proving the environmental credentials (e.g., carbon impacts) of a single, large capital project and even the operational consequences of that project in the context of an existing system. This approach has established a model whereby we incrementally convert one component of an infrastructure system from relying on fossil fuels to one that can operate from renewable energy. It has meant our approach can add and subtract that ‘piece of the puzzle’ in a relatively simple manner relative to existing community.
However as we look at the scale of change needed, as set out in the National Adaptation Plan, our models need to move to assess the carbon consequences of infrastructure that enables hundreds or thousands of separate ‘societal operations’ to transform (be that housing of whānau, be it industrial processes for food or be it providing cultural opportunities for our society) and enable the consideration of these wider consequences to our decision making processes on the form, location, design and priority for infrastructure investment. In other words, it is about the opportunity for infrastructure to provide a wider platform for social change and transformation, beyond just its carbon footprint.
The good news is that we don’t need to learn this approach from scratch. There are others, and in Aotearoa particularly Te Ao Māori perspectives, that can assist us in thinking about these opportunities for a holistic approach. The te reo expression Mauri Tu, Mauri Ora (the aware and attentive life force begets life) is a good synonym for the concept of regenerative and holistic design, the ability for careful design approaches to enable wider holistic systems to prosper – effectively creating opportunities for our future.
In the context of infrastructure, an example of such an approach might include design of transport systems to acknowledge impacts of the past and seek to reverse these. By way of a simple example, the design of a new transport corridor serving industrial land uses on our foreshore might be extended to include stormwater and contamination treatment systems that recognise and seek to restore the wider environmental consequences of the current and historic land use, while also including opportunities to re-establish community and Māori connections to the moana or sea. Addressing cultural severance and Treaty issues could be a further extension.
In thinking about the opportunity for multiple outcomes from delivery of infrastructure, we move beyond simply ‘treating the problem’to an approach that proactively considers the broader outcomes and enables regeneration.
This is not to suggest that such a change in thinking is easy, nor that it will come without cost or compromise. In fact, what it will require is:
Courage – to challenge ourselves to look into the future and assess the potential consequences of different scenarios and make decisions on the ‘potential outcomes’ that might be delivered by transformative change. To some extent factors such as our “scientific/proof based” training and the evidential hurdles of the resource management system have established an inherent conservatism in forecasting potential benefits, essentially devaluing benefits that may be realised in the longer term, in favour of the more tangible but often short-term benefits that ‘incremental change’ can deliver. It seems doubtful that this level of “future” discounting will enable the scale of change we now need to adapt.
Curiosity - by acknowledging that our activities (both ongoing and historic) mean that our mokopuna will reside in a very different physical world from that which we enjoy today, we can ideally become more “open” to (if not feel a greater responsibility for) incorporating more regenerative and future focused thinking into the infrastructure demands we will need to meet. This includes different approaches to evaluate the ‘value’ of infrastructure options, particularly for more holistic models. In Aotearoa, we have the advantage and opportunity of Te Ao Māori approaches, an alternative world view for design thinking.
Integrated problem solving – as with many of these suggestions, this is already happening to various extents, but further improvements can be made in the development of fully integrated infrastructure solutions. It goes without saying that our environment is a system as opposed to a collection of individual actions/projects/initiatives and therefore systems thinking is required. System thinking requires a genuinely collective and connected approach, starting with problem identification/definition and necessitating multi-agency responses. An aligned commitment to addressing these issues with both a current and future lens is a critically important first step. The next will be partnership across infrastructure, finance, political, cultural and community sectors.
Collaborative and Cooperative approaches - Lastly, many of the more significant challenges we now face are global as opposed to local, and therefore the fastest way to progress is collaborate both locally and internationally, to learn from what has been trialed, what has worked and hasn’t and then adapt to best suit Aotearoa. We can also learn as much from failures as we can from success which requires a willingness to share without judgement. The other powerful driver is that we all share the same planet and therefore issues such as climate and carbon impact every one of us, whether we want to be or not. Therefore, any solution needs to involve all of us, not simply those that can “afford” to decarbonise, which is further exacerbated when parts of society are struggling to afford the basics.
The challenge is ahead of us and it is one that we can certainly master with the right will and dedication, and if further incentive is required, then perhaps we need to look no further than what we want for our children.