Infrastructure investment, change change and biodiversity loss might seem unconnected, but there are growing demands for them to be linked and addressed together.

A new report by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) highlights how infrastructure investment can help tackle the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and growing threats to human health.

The study says it is important to recognise how human wellbeing, economic resilience, and development outcomes increasingly depend on the health of natural and climate systems.

And it argues infrastructure should not be seen as isolated assets, but rather as a “systemic lever” linking ecosystem protection, climate adaptation and mitigation, and population health.

It calls for more nature-positive infrastructure, which treats ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, and watersheds, as well as more climate-adaptive and climate-mitigating infrastructure, which reduces emissions and climate risks.

The report adds scaling such investments requires long-term, adaptive infrastructure design, which recognizes the time horizons over which ecological and resilience benefits materialize.

And it adds it also depends on more results-based and policy-based financing, which can enable reforms and investments to be sustained at scale.

Vera Siesjö, a senior one health scientist at AIIB, said “we need to address health, nature, climate and infrastructure together” in a statement.

Siesjö added as climate risks intensify and development challenges become increasingly interconnected, addressing these areas in isolation is no longer sufficient.

“Whether we are looking at transport, energy, water or urban systems, every infrastructure decision should be treated as a long-term decision about human and planetary health,” said Siesjö.

“This requires new models of coordination across governments, with environment, health, transport, energy, digital connectivity, planning and finance ministries working together from design through to implementation.”

Siesjö added the development community has a critical role to play in moving infrastructure for planetary health from ambition to implementation and scale.

She said it can act as a platform and multiplier, aligning finance, policy and implementation to turn integrated infrastructure solutions from concepts into investable projects.

“This means helping countries develop the enabling policy frameworks, institutional capacity and investment pipelines needed to deliver projects that generate benefits across health, climate and nature.”

The executive director of the global advocacy initiative Campaign for Nature, Brian O’Donnell, said infrastructure designers must transition from ‘grey’ concrete-based solutions to more nature-based systems, in an interview.

O’Donnell added natural infrastructure systems, like mangroves, wetlands and marches can often provide cheaper, more effective flood protection.

He said it was important that infrastructure designers have scientists on their teams and consider long-term environmental projections.

“We can no longer plan infrastructure as the world is today, because of the rapid change we are seeing,” he told me.

“We need to be looking at what the world is going to look like in in five years, 10 years, and 100 years. Infrastructure designers need to start to think about those time horizons.”

Arup’s global director of sustainable development, Jo da Silva, said the AIIB report is a timely reminder that infrastructure needs to work with natural systems, and how healthy ecosystems can strengthen resilience and support human health and wellbeing, in a statement.

She added realising these benefits requires long-term investment and a willingness to consider nature much earlier in infrastructure decisions.

“The priority now is to translate this thinking into practical change at scale,” said da Silva.

“That means embedding nature into infrastructure decision-making early, seeing it as a vital part of the process and not a ‘nice-to-have’.”

Professor Mahmood added planetary health becomes mainstream when it is simply “how we plan, finance and build”.

Lena Thiede, co-founder and general partner at venture capital fund Planet A, said infrastructure funds took 77% of new climate fund capital last year, mostly for mature solar, wind, energy, and mobility, in a statement.

Thiede added investing in this critical infrastructure will aid the building of energy systems that “are not hostage to a choke point” and supply chains that do not depend on unstable geopolitics.

“Infrastructural adaptation has been harder for venture to finance in the past because its benefits are localised, and adaptation addresses chronic risks such as summer heatwaves or acute shocks like climate-related disasters. It is hard to build a business around events that occur once or twice a decade,” she said.

“However, as these occurrences become more frequent, we will see further innovation and willingness to think about how we shape and invest in a resilient economy and society.”