Preface: How Thinking about Sustainability Can Provide Insight
To what extent can the sustainable development "lens" offer a new perspective on infrastructure issues? To answer this, consider how infrastructure has often been viewed in the past.
Traditionally, infrastructure policy has been largely focused on efficient use of scarce resources, acknowledging that policy must also address and minimise undesirable side-effects such as the impacts of energy generation on air quality and people's health, or the fragmentation of communities when roads are built. However, in many cases, while social and environmental aspects were given consideration, these dimensions were fairly low on the policy agenda. They were not systematically addressed by government within a coherent policy framework. Legislation such as the Resource Management Act is indicative - it is substantially a "defensive" framework, focused mostly on avoiding, remedying and/or mitigating adverse effects, and ensuring that environmental "bottom lines" are not breached.1
Over the last decade or so, many people's preoccupations have started to change as prosperity has increased. Increasingly, consideration is being given to social, cultural and environmental goals as well as avoiding impacts in these areas. For example, more attention is being paid to facilitating transport modes that can contribute to individual health and the cohesion of communities. And synergies and "whole system" issues are being considered. For example, some observers are beginning to argue that prosperity may be improved faster if the economy and society become more "inclusive" - by, for example, ensuring people have ready access to community facilities and work opportunities.2 And there is greater interest in whether pursuing environmental goals such as clean water can also advance economic prosperity, for example by protecting a country's reputation in export markets.3
In short, there is a trend (strengthened recently by the Government's sustainable development Programme of Action) to thinking in a more systematic way about the "bigger picture" connections, and - instead of seeing these matters as side-issues - viewing them as an essential part of the policy and investment debate.
Sustainable development can be viewed as encapsulating this way of looking at issues and choices. While people interpret it in different ways, it is seldom a rejection of the objective of increasing standards of living, but rather a view that sound policy can contribute to prosperity and at the same time advance the non-economic aspects of a better quality of life. This applies whether the issue is shaping infrastructure policy, or developing policy in other areas.
Against this backdrop, this report focuses on "adding value" in a particular way. We focus on what a sustainability perspective can add, when we examine four infrastructure sectors. Thus we have less to say about the traditional economic investment drivers and considerations, and more to say about environmental, social and cultural considerations in infrastructure policy, and how they might interact with economic factors. For example, how might better infrastructure contribute to health, say; how might reducing congestion contribute to both better social and economic outcomes through access to community services; and how might a different energy policy emphasis contribute to both reducing infrastructure costs and improving security of supply, with social, environmental and economic benefits?
Because some of the implications of policy affecting physical infrastructure in the sectors covered are only just beginning to emerge (for example, the links between transport infrastructure and health impacts), and because our current brief and resources are limited, this discussion is exploratory, rather than definitive. We see it as a first step in investigating a territory that others can map more systematically in coming years.
Ralph Chapman
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