Making Infrastructure Resource Efficient - Policy Brief October 2019

This policy brief, Making Infrastructure Resource Efficient, identifies a critical need to decouple economic growth from the extraction and use of natural resources. Infrastructure development is particularly resource intensive, and in 2015 the construction sector alone accounted for half of the global material footprint. Increasing the resource efficiency of infrastructure can be a major driver of the transition to sustainable development. It is now vital that policymakers and planners recognize the interlinkages between natural resources, material resource use, and the diverse and complex systems of infrastructure that are required to support economic and human development.