There’s a paradox at the heart of net zero and resilience: both are vital, but neither is sufficient. Ignoring net zero and simply adapting our infrastructure and society will lead to runaway temperature rises. But net zero alone, while reducing climate change and its associated disruption, will leave us exposed to suffering undue effects of climate change, which could overwhelm our societies even within the 2°C limit. Now, with the effects of climate change already apparent, the world is converging upon the need for both net zero and resilience.
Yet if we’re serious about confronting climate change, we must do more than invest in net zero and resilience. We must approach both in tandem, so that each is informed and enriched by the other. However, this is far from straightforward. Both are inherently complex, involving interconnected systems with myriad feedbacks. Both deal with uncertainty over a long period of time. Both require significant interventions, whether at country, city or corporate level. And while they don’t need to be joined up every step of the way, they do need to influence one another. Otherwise, we risk sub-optimal outcomes in both.
For all the uncertainty, it’s clear that standing still is not an option. Every type of organisation is being challenged to change. Even without the effects of climate change itself, the ongoing evolution of regulation will challenge our entire sector to improve how we build, operate, and maintain infrastructure over time. Already a blizzard of regulations is engulfing businesses across the board. A reactive approach leaves organisations at risk of falling behind and of not taking responsibility for their future. The risk of stranded assets, ineligibility for investment and funding, and non-compliance is growing.
The challenges we are facing don’t sit within one particular sector, so our solutions must be similarly multifaceted. Cross-sector collaboration is the only way. We’re being challenged to hold these conversations immediately, leveraging existing partnerships in new ways, in addition to forming new and unconventional ones and increasing maturity across the board. If the climate is changing, we must change, too.
Uncertainty unmasked
Cross-sector collaboration is hard - but in a context of pervasive uncertainty, it becomes enormously difficult. From time frames to severity of impacts to the socio-economic reaction, layers of
uncertainty make it hard to prioritise, which hampers decision-making. With so much uncertainty, it’s hard to invest with confidence. We must therefore work together to unearth non-traditional ways of anticipating risk and assessing assets, even in the face of uncertainty. Given the urgency of the situation, and the extremely challenging build rates required to build the low-carbon power systems undergirding decarbonisation, converting uncertainty into confidence is crucial.
Strategic plans and industrial strategies can generate greater certainty and confidence regarding how and where to invest, but waiting for top-down leadership isn’t always viable. Instead, cross-sector bodies can come together in their region to pool their knowledge and speak as one. Regional clusters can help convince national authorities to confront common threats and capitalise on opportunities. Understanding the particular capabilities, needs, and challenges of your region can help to define a manageable path to greater resilience. If you are in a jurisdiction with a strong carbon plan in place, expecting zero carbon power in future, your net zero plans may be clear; but if you don’t have that, perhaps you can build your own microgrid or invest in partnership with other businesses to improve local power capabilities. Vertical integration can also help to de-risk investment and improve confidence. For example, Cement 2 Zero turned a promising low-carbon material into a viable investment, by uniting across the supply chain to break down barriers to adoption and establish a clear route to market. The pattern is clear: partnerships can reduce uncertainty while increasing confidence.
Togetherness and certainty are important, but they must be backed by data. Sophisticated scenario analysis can clarify our choices and enrich decision making. In turn, this can help asset owners to optimise portfolios economically in a changing world, or enable net zero targets to inform decision making. Data can clarify choices and allow organisations to make progress despite the complex technical and regulatory landscape. Yet these are of limited value if individual organisations pursue them in isolation. Establishing digital architecture enabling collaboration, clarity, and knowledge-sharing can help to eliminate inefficiencies and increase transparency. Common data environments, backed by purposeful data governance and clear standards, foster deep collaboration, especially when embedded into projects from the start. They can ensure that, as we identify the threats, define our options, and develop robust plans for resilience, we do so in unison, and not in siloes.
Towards lasting resilience
Across both net zero and resilience, we must learn to focus on outcomes, not threats. Starting with the threats tends towards siloed, linear approaches. But climate change isn’t a single threat, and nor is it about simply thwarting rising seas or bad weather. It’s a threat multiplier, intensifying individual stressors like intense precipitation, drought, and sea-level rise. At the same time, it's also the concurrent and cascading impacts that climate change is magnifying. For example, persistent drought worsens the incidence and severity of wildland fires, which in turn denude landscapes, increasing the risk of flooding landslides. With such complex and widespread feedback loops, focusing on the threat is difficult, because it’s so multifaceted and long-term.
Instead, we should focus on the societal outcomes we want, and evaluate which factors must be safeguarded in order to maintain those outcomes even in the face of a volatile climate. Identifying the fundamentals of a cohesive, robust, and resilient society requires us to gain a deeper understanding of the interdependent systems undergirding society, and the individuals and communities operating within them. So that, in the face of the myriad threats of climate change, we know what we’re trying to preserve, and what we need to do so. That’s what differentiates an integrated, holistic approach from a narrower one focusing solely on neutralising climate-related threats.
Physical, natural, and digital infrastructure must work together if they’re to provide and safeguard critical resources like power, food, and water. Similarly, if we’re to develop solutions to the challenges that threaten these systems, we must recognise their interdependence, or else fail to truly protect, nurture, and prepare them for the future. Failing to take this into account increases the risk that we inadvertently ‘bake in’ vulnerabilities, even as we make progress. This is especially true of our standards. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is the most widespread green building rating system in the world, providing frameworks for virtually all building types. However, although LEED provides rigorous net zero standards, it is drawing criticism for its apparent failure to consider major flood risk. These certification gaps tend to result from insufficient integration of net zero and resilience, and they could engender a dangerous false confidence in our infrastructure’s fitness for the near future. Considering net zero and resilience together can help to avoid such gaps and create more efficient routes to achieving both outcomes.
Integration for transformation
Integration is the hallmark of successful adaptation - and of a resilient society. In order to integrate net zero and resilience, and avoid the risks and inefficiencies incurred by pursuing each individually, we must integrate considerations of decarbonization and broader resource sustainability concerns (water, air quality, and so on) while investing in resilience - such as asset sizing, design, and materials selection. This approach can both strengthen physical assets, while using materials and approaches that also reduce carbon footprint and increase efficiency. For example, windows can be simultaneously wind-resistant and energy efficient, reducing carbon footprint while deepening hazard resilience, too. However, incentivising these choices requires being aware of both needs, and the relationship between them. Otherwise, we risk missing out on optimal solutions, because net zero and resilience were not considered in an integrated, joined up way.
By conceiving of social, natural, and built environments as interdependent matrices, systems thinking helps ensure that we approach these challenges with the whole in mind, rather than becoming preoccupied with discrete problems within the systems themselves. Now, we’re realising that our civilization and nature itself are systems of interdependent systems - there’s no ‘outside’ in which to dump so-called ‘negative externalities’.
Integration is more challenging, but it’s also much more effective. By understanding these principles and shaping our solutions around them, we can exploit vast potential efficiencies and embed resilience at a much deeper level. Collaboration allows us to weave together the different threads that knit communities, from the physical and natural to the social, digital, and cyber. No longer can we simply build a bridge as a discrete piece of infrastructure. Facilitating early-stage dialogues between disciplines, stakeholders, and authorities is therefore vital.
The resilient resolution
Resilience and net zero must mature to become inherent in all we do. Like safety, which is not a separate consideration but infused in every aspect of infrastructure, so too must resilience and net zero become fundamental aspects of our culture. No single discipline can be responsible for shaping these responses. And neither is a top-down, owner-operator approach enough; we need to reshape how we plan, conceive of, and relate to our built, natural, and social environments, with resilience and net zero at the heart. We can only achieve this if it penetrates through every type of work; it must be pervasive.
Fortunately, many solutions are already available and underway. From improvements in data gathering, analysis, and sharing, to rapid and affordable visualisation and scenario modelling technology, the necessary tools are within reach. Coupled with a systems thinking approach and an openness to partnership, these developments can help to overcome uncertainty and enable organisations of all kinds to get started.
Finally, amid all this progress, it’s important to recognise that sustainable change is the only kind capable of helping us. Resilience and net zero are not monolithic, one-off challenges. They’re continuous, ongoing, aspirational transformations that will influence society and economy for centuries. The choices before us are difficult, but they’re also opportunities to bring about a world that is not only more resilient, but more sustainable, just, and prosperous, too. Ensuring that investments deliver over their lifetime is vital. Long-term, sustainable change is best nurtured in the same way as all successful change: together.
5 steps to getting started…
- Think holistically about the challenge and the outcome
What are the different potential scenarios, and how do they affect different sectors across the lifecycle? Similarly - what outcomes are you looking to achieve, and what do they depend on?
- Get up to speed on upcoming regulation
It’s not just being aware of what’s on the horizon. It’s understanding its likely impact on different aspects of your project, and preparing the relevant experts accordingly.
- Organise your data
Integrated data needs integrated organisation. Data standards and Common Data Environments can enable sharing between stakeholders - if they’re ready for use in time.
- Set performance metrics tracking resilience and decarbonisation
What’s measured is managed - setting clear, evidenced, and widely understood performance metrics can enforce standards across both resilience and decarbonisation.
- Start with ‘no regrets’ interventions that tackle both
Some interventions are less controversial than others. Identifying straightforward ‘no regrets’ interventions impacting resilience and decarbonisation can help to build the confidence you need to get started.
