by : Zia Qureshi

Zia Qureshi is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Director, Development Economics, at the World Bank.

 Infrastructure is a powerful driver of economic growth and inclusive development, capable of boosting aggregate demand today and laying the foundations for future growth. It is also a key element of the climate-change agenda. Done badly, infrastructure is a major part of the problem; done right, it is a major part of the solution.

Over the next 15 years, more than $90 trillion in infrastructure investment will be needed worldwide. That is more than twice the value of the entire stock of infrastructure today, and requires total annual investment to increase more than twofold, from $2.5-3 trillion to above $6 trillion. Around 75% of this investment will have to take place in the developing world, particularly middle-income countries, owing to their growth needs, rapid urbanization, and already-large infrastructure backlogs.

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Closing the infrastructure gap will undoubtedly be challenging. But it also represents a profound opportunity to create the underpinnings of a more sustainable future.

As it stands, more than 80% of the world’s primary energy supply and more than two-thirds of its electricity are derived from fossil fuels. Infrastructure alone accounts for around 60% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. If the world follows the same old approaches in building new infrastructure, it would lock in polluting, resource-intensive, and unsustainable pathways to growth.

But shifting to renewable energies and sustainable infrastructure can have the opposite impact, helping to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions while enhancing countries’ resilience to climate change. If climate risks are factored into investment decisions, renewable energies, cleaner transport, efficient water systems, and smarter, more resilient cities will emerge as the best bets.

Fortunately, the political will to take action to mitigate climate change has never been stronger. At last December’s United Nations climate conference in Paris, world leaders reached a landmark agreement to work toward a more sustainable future, including by transforming the way infrastructure projects are developed, financed, and implemented.

But agenda setting is just the first step. Delivering sustainable infrastructure at scale will require strong public policy leadership and responsive private-sector entrepreneurship.

Policymakers must clearly articulate overall strategies for sustainable infrastructure investment, and embed them in comprehensive frameworks for sustainable growth and development. Here, the G20 countries can lead the way. Only with such integrated strategies can policymakers offer the level of policy coherence needed not just to maximize the effectiveness of each policy, but also to instill confidence in the private sector to do its part.

What precisely should those strategies entail? While specific policy actions and priorities must be tailored to individual countries’ circumstances, the main elements of sustainable infrastructure agendas can broadly be captured under four “I”s: investment, incentives, institutions, and innovation.

For starters, policymakers will need to ensure a significant increase in total investment. This requires a reversal of the broadly negative public-investment trend in the last couple of decades. Governments must allocate significantly more funds to sustainable infrastructure.

But, given severe fiscal constraints in many countries, public investment alone is not enough; the private sector will still have to meet more than half of the total need. Efforts to reduce policy risks and costs of doing business can help spur the private sector to scale up investment considerably.

To ensure that new investment is oriented toward sustainable infrastructure, policymakers must also adjust market incentives. The elimination of fossil-fuel subsidies and the implementation of carbon pricing are particularly important; with oil prices very low, now is the ideal time for countries to implement such reforms. Pricing reform will also be needed in other industries, including water. By getting prices right and reforming regulation to correct distorted incentives, governments can put markets to work in support of public-policy goals.

But more investment alone is not enough. Strong institutions are needed to ensure the feasibility, quality, and impact of that investment. Particularly important is the capacity to develop strong project pipelines and institutional frameworks for public-private partnerships. With around 70% of total investment in sustainable infrastructure occurring in urban areas, close attention must also be paid to the quality of municipal institutions, as well as cities’ fiscal capacities. For developing economies, multilateral development banks will be a key partner in building capacity and catalyzing financing.

Finally, there is the fourth “I”: innovation. On one hand, technological innovation will be needed to provide increasingly efficient components of low-carbon, climate-resilient infrastructure. That is why investment in research and development – especially in renewable-energy technologies – must also increase significantly.

On the other hand, fiscal and financial innovation will be needed to capture the potential of new technologies. Specifically, the creative use of fiscal space will enable the mobilization of more financing for sustainable infrastructure. And there will be more space as carbon taxes raise substantial revenue for governments (and improve the tax structure).

Meanwhile, new financial instruments and the resourceful use of development capital can leverage more private finance and lower its cost. Promoting infrastructure as an asset class could help attract more savings toward infrastructure. As it stands, assets under management by banks and institutional investors worldwide amount to more than $120 trillion, of which infrastructure accounts for only about 5%.

Today, both infrastructure investment and climate action are urgently needed. With the right approach, we can achieve both goals simultaneously, building a more prosperous and sustainable future.

Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/infrastructure-investment-climate-change-by-zia-qureshi-2016-02-by-project-syndicate-2016-02#XjZF7cpjCxxIzyuK.99

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Published: 28 February 2016

An Iranian woman shows her inked finger after casting her vote at a polling station at Ershad Mosque in Tehran. Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA
Long queues force extension of voting in crucial Iran elections

Tehran // Voting was extended four times on Friday as Iranians stood in long lines to cast ballots in an electoral test for moderate president Hassan Rouhani, who hopes to curb conservative dominance in parliament and deliver domestic reforms.

With the polls coming just one month after sanctions were lifted under a nuclear deal between Mr Rouhani’s government and world powers, the outcome will be seen as a de-facto referendum on his administration.

As well as picking 290 members of parliament, the 55 million-strong electorate was also selecting the Assembly of Experts, a powerful committee of 88 clerics that monitors the work of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and may choose his successor.

There were big queues at polling stations in Tehran and state television showed similar scenes in other cities, with officials speaking of a high turnout, which is likely to benefit reformers.

Polls opened at 8am and with many still waiting in line when they were supposed to close at 6pm, the interior ministry extending the voting hours until 11pm.

The right to vote remains contentious in Iran because although more time was given in a 2009 presidential election, whose outcome was disputed, many voters said polling station doors were closed while they were still queueing outside.

After voting in Tehran, Mr Rouhani, 67, pledged to protect the integrity of the elections as “a mark of trust”.

On Friday, some voters said they would wait as long as it takes.

“It’s worth it,” said Zahra Jamshidi, 23, a student in east Tehran, who had been standing in line for 40 minutes.

Turnout in parliamentary elections four years ago was 64 per cent nationwide and 48 per cent in Tehran.

Higher participation would help Mr Rouhani and his reformist allies, after many moderate voters stayed away in 2012 in protest at the re-election three years earlier of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Known as the “diplomat sheikh” on account of his clerical credentials and willingness to negotiate, Mr Rouhani was the driving force behind the nuclear deal, which he delivered despite political pressure at home.

The UN’s atomic watchdog said on Friday that Iran was complying with nuclear deal, in its first report since the accord came into force on January 16.

The agreement with powers led by the United States, the Islamic republic’s bete noire, raised hopes of recovery in Iran but although the economy exited a deep recession in 2014-2015, growth has stagnated in the past year.

A pro-government coalition of moderate and reformist candidates called “The List of Hope” is representing the president’s ambitions in the polls.

If voters support the pro-Rouhani list, the president could swing the balance of power among MPs and potentially pass economic, social and political legislation which have so far been blocked.

Legislators are elected for four years but the Assembly of Experts has eight-year terms. Should Khamenei, who is 76, die during that time its members would pick his replacement.

Many young Iranians – 60 percent of Iran’s 79 million population are aged under 30 – posted selfies on social media as they waited to vote.

“We need to open the doors of our country to the world,” said Atefeh Jaberi, a 45-year-old writer, outside Hosseiniye Ershad, a religious institute in north Tehran, who was backing Mr Rouhani’s allies.

“We need fundamental reforms, we need to support the government.”

The run-up to polling day was largely overshadowed by controversies over who was allowed to run. Thousands of candidates were excluded.

Reformists said they were worst hit, with the barring of their most prominent faces leaving them with untested hopefuls.

A total of 4,844 candidates, about 10 per cent of whom are women, stood in the parliamentary election. Only 159 clerics – a fifth of the applicants – were vying for the Assembly of Experts.

The pro-Rouhani list is headed by Mohammad Reza Aref, a former vice president in the 1997-2005 two-term government of reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

“If we win, the path becomes much smoother,” Mr Aref said. A similar result to Mr Rouhani’s victory of 2013, in which he won in the first round with 51 per cent of the vote, could usher in prosperity, he said.

“Hopefully once we win a majority our first step will be an economic boom.”

The main conservative faction in the parliamentary polls is headed by Gholam-Ali Hadad Adel, a former parliament speaker who said he was “optimistic” about the polls.

Results from outside Tehran were expected within 24 hours but the vote tally in the capital, which has a population of 12 million and was electing 30 members of parliament, will take three days.

* Agence France-Presse

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Published: 27 February 2016