Last month, Jane Jamieson, Program Manager for the Quality Infrastructure Investment (QII) Partnership and the Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), along with Khafi Weekes, Climate Infrastructure Specialist at PPIAF, and Helen Gall, Monitoring and Evaluation ETC at QII, participated in the Understanding Risk Global Forum in Himeji, Japan.
Initiated in 2010, this year’s Forum was the largest yet, attracting over 1,700 Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) experts and practitioners from across the globe.
PPIAF and QII had a strong showing at the Forum, participating in five events, including three plenaries and two workshops.
Plenaries
Jamieson was a speaker in the first plenary session, "Risky Business: Attracting Private Finance for Adaptation”. The session was moderated by Zoe Trohanis, Lead DRM Specialist from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), and included participation from Astrid Monroth, Program Manager of Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) and Carolina Diaz Geraldo from the National Planning Department of Colombia.
During the panel, Jamieson emphasized the importance of early planning for climate risk in technical assessments, engineering designs, KPIs and contractual clauses to embed resilience into PPP projects; as well as broader life-cycle costing approaches of infrastructure investments to ensure economic efficiency throughout the entire lifespan of these assets. She also showcased key case studies from the QII and PPIAF portfolios. Watch the entire plenary session here.
Weekes participated as a panelist in this second session, "Sowing Seeds of Resilience: Financing Nature-Based Solutions for Disaster Risk Reduction”. Moderated by Kanako Morita, Associate Professor from Keio University and included panelists -Nuzulina Ilmiaty Ismail, Head of Region III Sub-directorate of Rivers and Coasts, Ministry of Public Works and Housing of the Government of Indonesia, Rowan Douglas, CEO, Climate Risk & Resilience from Howden Group and Brenden Jongman, Task Team Leader, Global Program on Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience from GFDRR.
The panel highlighted key opportunities and challenges to unlocking the power of the private sector to infuse much needed innovation and finance in this sphere. Weekes highlighted PPIAF’s new Adaptation Finance and Biodiversity program that is developing practical business models and an investment pipeline to scale private finance of biodiversity conservation and NbS, a key part of PPIAF’s response to the climate crisis. Watch the entire plenary session here.
In the third and final panel, “How Much Resilience? Tools for Disaster Risk Assessment to Promote Resilience in Infrastructure Investments.” Jamieson joined GFDRR Practice Manager, Nils Nilsson, and highlighted key tools and approaches from PPIAF and QII in mainstreaming resilience in infrastructure investments. She touched on the core QII principles and PPIAF’s climate toolkits, using case study examples to demonstrate practically how climate adaptation and resilience building can be infused in planning for sustainable infrastructure.
Workshops
PPIAF and QII also hosted two workshops. The first was a technical session hosted by QII: “Combining Big Data and Private Financing to Achieve Transport Resilience”.
The session covered topics relating to innovative contracting mechanisms for incentivizing private sector financing and risk sharing, as well as innovative uses of big data to mainstream resilience throughout the infrastructure planning and implementation phases. A case study of the Maputo BRT Project, funded by PPIAF and QII, was presented to demonstrate how publicly available data from the World Bank’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal was used to assess climate risk exposure, the results of which were applied to assess the feasibility of the business case and financial model of planned private investments in the BRT network.
The second workshop and final event of the Forum was hosted by PPIAF in collaboration with the GIF and QII: “Accounting for climate risks and identifying opportunities in infrastructure PPPs: A New Suite of Climate Toolkits”.
The workshop included a deep dive on methods, tools, and approaches of the Climate Toolkits for Infrastructure PPPs (CTIP3) to plan for climate risks and opportunities in infrastructure PPPs. Practical examples demonstrated how PPIAF has spearheaded the use of the climate toolkits through pilot implementations in key sectors and various countries worldwide.
To reinforce the knowledge presented, the workshop featured an interactive session where participants applied the toolkits to plan for a simulated climate-smart project.
